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Between the two of you, Satoru is much more intense with the games he plays.
One of the biggest complaints you have about your classroom is just how hot the air conditioning is and how the school for some reason still doesn’t have the budget to fix it. Sixteen degrees don’t even feel like anything remotely cold. Combine that with your homeroom teacher not attending today because of a counselor meeting, that is exactly why you’re sitting on a slightly too uncomfortable bean bag in your school library and playing Animal Crossing on your Switch.
Satoru’s here too with you, and truth be told, not very interested in anything in the library. All of the books here were, albeit winning a competition for being one of the best school libraries in the city, completely lackluster to him. The only book he’s ever read from this library was Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry—something he copped real soon while scrolling through the biology section—and finished in three weeks between classes.
Something that has become one of your recent complaints besides your classroom’s miserable ventilation situation, is the clicky sound of Satoru’s newly bought gaming laptop. Those chunky ones with the RGB lighting, and extremely loud fans. You assume that his attention span has deteriorated in such a profound way to the point where he can’t stop himself from opening three tabs at once while he’s in a loading menu playing a video game.
It takes you exactly five more seconds of his rapid typing and a sigh. No doubt about it, he accidentally mistyped on a test. The typing stops, but it’s replaced with the sound of digital footsteps.
“Why do you keep changing tabs every five seconds?” you ask, looking away from your own game to stare at Satoru above you on the sofa. Or more, his stupid laptop that adds a trillion kilos to his bag. “Actually, why do you bring that to school?”
Satoru doesn’t move from his spot, neither does he make an attempt to look at you, his face covered by his open laptop lid. “Unlike you, I enjoy games with actual gameplay.”
You don’t lean over to watch his screen but you hear very audible sounds of something, emulating the sound of a frying pan hitting a surface. Taking a concise guess, you’re pretty sure he’s in combat. “You’re playing as a middle-aged man beating people up with a bicycle,” you say.
“Builds character,” Satoru shrugs coolly and your eyes briefly dart to his right hand holding his mouse, constantly repositioning itself from the awkward sensor position it occupied.
“Animal Crossing builds community,” you retort at him, your left thumb moving your joystick around aimlessly, subsequently making your little character move around your island in circles.
Satoru finally lowers the lid of his laptop, a full 180 degrees, giving you a view of him properly. His bright eyes stare at you for a brief moment. He’s not wearing shades today—technically, because they were confiscated by your terrible student affairs teacher-slash-monitor-slash-demon—which he doesn’t need, but he’s opted with his glasses, which he does need, that make him look kinder than he actually is. “Animal Crossing builds debt.”
“You don’t understand fun,” your eyes narrow at him.
“Nothing is fun about spending 10,000 yen to do digital chores,” Satoru says matter-of-factly. Satoru’s nails hit the aluminum of his laptop’s palm rest in rhythmic beats as if he’s waiting for something at a reception hall.
“What about the cabaret club?” you chirp at him, coming to his side to watch his gameplay. He’s not even doing anything exciting, just aimlessly walking around Sotenbori in Yakuza 0. You recall he’s been trying to speedrun the series for some reason.
Satoru hisses at the mention of the mini-game and he turns to look at you. He recovers quickly though, turning to you with an exaggerated smugness. “Least my game has stakes.”
“My villagers love me,” you hum, eyes briefly glancing down at your handheld. You’ve recently bought the new Nintendo console, which sucked your pockets dry, and you’ve customized every part of it—mostly done at school with Ieiri leering at you because ‘This is a bad idea, [Name]’—but really, all you’ve been playing is Animal Crossing.
“They’re programmed to,” Satoru finally closes Yakuza. You watch him briefly look at your screen but you don’t see the amused smile he has on his lips from your angle. You only see the way his cursor starts rotating in imperfect circles on his Steam menu figuring out what game to boot up.
Your lips form a pout subconsciously. You’re back to walking around aimlessly on your island, but this time, actually focused on the screen. “And?”
“That’s pathetic,” he deadpans.
You don’t pay any more attention to him and you straighten your feet to the ground. The stretch in your muscles is enough to garner momentum for you to stretch your arms out too. With a sigh, you bring your limbs back into a huddle. You let a beat of silence pass, though the heat-heavy fans that should count as white noise coming from Satoru’s laptop still makes it hard. You throw your Switch carelessly on the carpeted surface, the charm strap attached to the device clacking in a muffled sound on the surface.
You mumble, mostly to yourself. “I still want Tomodachi Life, though.”
Satoru’s fingers pause mid-input, twitching six times before he opens his mouth to speak. His hand goes back to his mouth, banging it slightly on the cushioned surface of the sofa at the lack of input in his screen. “You’ve mentioned that game,” he says slowly, “every single day of the week.”
“Because it’s peak.”
“The Miis all look like Yaga,” he states.
Your lips twitch up beneath your arms shielding your head from the light and you can’t resist the chuckle that erupts from the middle of your throat. It turns into a fully realized laughter soon after, your mind conjuring up your own little fantasy of Principal Yaga becoming a Mii in your hypothetical island. “That’s the appeal.”
“Why don’t you just buy it then?” he asks inquisitively. Satoru sometimes forgets that not everybody can readily buy videogames on the market at such high prices immediately. Granted, he can’t either really, but his limitations are mostly mental, you deduced.
You give him an offended look. Grimacing, you crawl onto the carpet to retrieve the decorated Switch you so dramatically tossed aside. “I’m broke. No money. Budgeting. Frugal living.”
“Like hell,” he mutters, not believing you one single bit. No person budgets and buys two strawberry milk cartons everyday from overpriced school-sanctioned vending machines. He can’t even say it’s impulsive spending anymore, it’s become a routine, and a very bad one at that. Not even Satoru would spend on shit like that.
Your eyes narrow at him and he returns the gesture. You look away first, watching your character talk to the two small raccoon dogs on your screen.
The boredom you feel for your games is too much. “Don’t talk to me about Tomodachi Life anymore.”
“You brought it up.”
“Whatever,” you let another sigh escape from your mouth, this one more dramatic than the first. You flop backwards into the bean bag until only the top half of your face peeks over your Switch. You don’t notice that Satoru has been watching you quietly, until his eyes drift back to his own screen. “I don’t wanna bring it up until I’ve actually experienced peak.”
The next time Satoru sees you, you’re sitting cross-legged on the floor, Monday, during lunch break and after another class with no teacher (which meant your class was simultaneously harmonizing together without a care about the CCTV cameras but also paying attention to themselves and themselves only). Your chin is resting on top of your palm and you’re staring blankly at Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream gameplay like someone mourning a dead relative.
“Can you mute your nightmare game?” Ieiri shouts from above you, leaning back on the plastic chair, and brows curling into a scrunch. She physically winces, made up of course, as the Mii in the gameplay mumbles “Surprise! We have a baby!” in that tinny voice on the screen.
“No,” you answer solemnly, turning your volume up, “they’re in love.”
Ieiri scowls at you. She turns back to her desk and snatches something from your own desk—probably something from your makeup bag, a lip tint or some other lip product because she refuses to carry her own products. It’s a hassle, she says. You think she’s just lazy and extorting her friend.
You hear the dusty sound of your classroom’s sliding door in the distance. Footsteps approach you and you hear the heavy thud of someone, no doubt about it, someone extremely arrogant (at least to you), crashing down on the chair adjacent to you, right beside your desk. Satoru had a dispensation letter today to help out with student council affairs. Your homeroom teacher was notoriously difficult, especially when it came to dispensations so you wonder how Satoru managed to get through her head with such a minuscule reason.
You don’t even bother to ask him why he’s so early. You’ve chosen to open up a short-form content app and search for Tomodachi Life customization and have ended up intently watching someone create Albert Wesker from Resident Evil in the Mii customization. It barely registers that Satoru threw his backpack at you, the one with papers sticking out of it unzipped, just to get you to snap out of it.
“You’re still on this?” he asks, turning his body to face you.
You don’t even look up from your phone. How many seconds or minutes has it been since you’ve not blinked? “You don’t get it.”
“No, I definitely don’t.”
You watch intensely. You criticize Satoru for not being able to keep his attention divided on one thing but as soon as that video ends, you’re back to searching up ‘tomodachi life relationships’ in your search bar. You click on the third video that pops up and it’s some anime characters Mii-fied and their little love story. “I could be experiencing peak fiction right now.”
“Peak fiction,” Satoru repeats flatly, “is not whatever this is.”
“You play games where cops say bad one-liners while fighting zombies,” again, you refuse to stop your burning gaze on your phone. If karma were real, you’d probably be wearing anti-glare and -20.0 prescription glasses that’d made you look just like Satoru.
“That’s art,” he responds immediately.
You finally look up at him and he’s already looking at you. Your screen, originally, but then his eyes trail up to find yours like you killed his dog. You point at the brightly adjusted screen, showing him two Miis—which he immediately recognized as Saiki and Teruhashi—getting married. “And this is sociology.”
Satoru doesn’t respond to you, he can’t, mostly. You slump backwards, your spine hitting the walls. “Anyway, that doesn’t matter,” you close your eyes, a frown on your face, closing in to form a very subtle pout. “I’m broke.”
“You’ve bought macarons down the street three times this week,” Satoru looks visibly appalled at your statement.
“Survival, not luxury,” you merely shake your head at his foolish comparison. It’s not like Satoru doesn’t ask for the vibrantly colored macarons. He takes two out of the pack full of six you buy and your friends, if they ask you for one, always get one. Greedy guy.
Satoru takes a moment to look at you again, almost quizzically. Like you’re some weirdly specific question in biology class about bones that is definitely a trick question—though, you wouldn’t know. You don’t take biology and don’t like it. You favor mathematically-inclined subjects more.
He finally falls out of his thinking, eyes zeroing in on your face again. Then in such a heavy-wielding way for someone who barely does sports and only goes to the gym, reaches into his backpack and grabs his laptop. He boots it up and types in his password rapidly. You momentarily look over to see what he’s doing and the unpleasant grimace on your face that appears when he types in VaatiVidya in his search bar.
“You’re seriously not gonna shut up about this game, huh?” he says, turning back to you after typing.
“Nope.”
“You’re annoying.”
You grin lazily at him for the first time all afternoon. You tug on Ieiri’s chair until it shifts under her weight, just enough for her to notice and look back. You gesture at her a motion that should be deciphered as putting on lip product and she raises an eyebrow before turning back, grabbing the mauve-colored lip tint and tossing it to you. “One day you’ll understand the artistic brilliance of tiny people interacting with each other as you oversee them.”
“I promise you,” Satoru starts, putting on his earbuds and clicking on a video, “the day will never come.”
Three days later, you’re carefully peeling off a sticker with tweezers from its sticker pack to put on your newly acquired journaling book before the first period. It’s still hot as hell in the classroom and your portable fan is whirling loudly in front of your face, sitting atop in the middle of your desk. School is already killing you and you can’t survive here, let alone with this heat, and your fan being dead twenty seconds ago. It’s charging now. At least.
Not even a second later, Satoru throws you a plastic game case directly onto your desk. It skids across your notebook and hits your fan. Startled, you look up, but then you look down when you realize nobody interesting threw it at you, and you instead focus on the flimsy case. You blink. Then you blink again. Slowly, you pick it up, examining the variegated colors of the case and the yellow blob framing the text: Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream.
“...What the fuck.”
Satoru doesn’t even consider that your brain has flatlined. He only drops into the seat next to you, his usual seat which he refused to change for some reason, like this is a completely normal interaction for people to be having at eight in the morning. “You complained enough that I started hearing Mii music in my sleep.”
“You bought this?” you question almost conjecturally.
Satoru gives you a look. “I stole it.”
“Satoru.”
“You were becoming unbearable,” the shrug on Satoru’s shoulders signals he doesn’t think this is a big deal at all. Whether it’s because his parents are loaded and as a direct response to his ridiculous, immense amount of pocket money, he gets to buy people stuff like this out of the blue, or if he genuinely thinks this is a normal act of friendship, you do not know.
You stare at the case yet again. It’s easily breakable plastic with a bright cover. You can break it with your hands effortlessly, but you can’t stop your jaw from dropping and curling into this excited little—big smile.
“Oh my God,” you squeal, opening the case to see that no, Satoru did not dupe you, and the cartridge inside is in fact Living the Dream. “I’m gonna make you a Mii.”
Satoru visibly recoils like you’ve done or is doing the stupidest thing possible. Absolutely not is on the tip of his tongue but the little ribbons in his throat are working with his brian in sync to stop him. He spins back towards his desk shortly after. “Do whatever you want.”
Still, Satoru can’t help but sneak a peek at you. Specifically, he watches you practically vibrating in your seat and radiating an aura rivaling a Buddhist monk, or even Buddha himself achieving enlightenment. It’s a little odd to him how you’re so excited for something so minute in significance but then it all vanishes because of two reasons. One being he remembers what he felt when Elden Ring came out, and two, how looking at you, something warm tugs unpleasantly at his chest.
You look way too happy over virtual apartment simulators with creepy characters.
“You’re getting the ugliest Mii possible,” you smile at him properly, unguarded and thrilled enough that your entire face changes. And also eye-catching enough for Satoru to realize you aren’t wearing that lip tint you normally apply in the morning yet.
Satoru briefly thinks that might’ve been worth the money. “Fuck you.”
It’s not very long until you’re completely hooked on the social simulation game. It takes not even until third period before you’re slotting the game cartridge into your constantly rattling, somehow even more over-decorated Switch. One of your thighs is cozily sitting atop the other and jittering very violently, though you’re sure it’s not just because of the game but because of the caffeine you drank a little bit earlier. You have chemistry in fourth. You are not missing out on chemistry because you pulled an all-nighter watching Tomodachi Life customization videos.
You miss out on chemistry because you’re playing Tomodachi Life.
The class itself is quiet chaos, mostly because Mr. Miyagi is re-explaining stoichiometry and electron affinity with all the enthusiasm of a man reading legal disclaimers and he gets paid too little to care about what happens in his class. Half the students are asleep, including Ieiri, but when is she not asleep in class, and the other half is pretending to listen and study while secretly watching videos under their desks.
You are experiencing enlightenment and the joy that comes with it, despite saying to yourself you were going to change and finally pay attention to chemistry this time around. You copy Satoru’s notes anyway, and despite his hectic schedule, you bully him enough for him to relinquish and tutor you. It'll all be fine.
Your Switch is hidden behind your pencil case, brightness lowered to near-invisible levels whilst you intensely customize your Mii. You briefly thank Satoru and the Gojō family for this in your head, and you also think about how well Tomodachi Life looks on your ornamented console. You think it’s particularly cute how the cat charm (a frankensteined item that came from Satoru also, a shitty bracelet that only had one good bead charm) on your phone strap turned Nintendo strap compliments the game all too well.
“You enjoying that?” Satoru mutters beside you, peeking over your shoulder to see whatever it is you’re doing in that stupid game.
“Very.”
“You’re taking this way too seriously,” Satoru mutters again, readjusting his glasses ever so slightly in an attempt to see your screen. You’re wearing a cardigan, the big ones that swallow your frame a little at the shoulders but are distinctively feminine in silhouette. The sleeves of them are big, and they somewhat assist in covering the screen. Satoru’s eyes narrow.
“I’m creating life.”
Satoru has completely given up on watching your gameplay. His eyesight is too terrible for this. He settles with leaning back on his chair, pushing his square prescription glasses up into his hair briefly before cleaning the lenses. That is the exact moment where you, whether on purpose or not, readjust the brightness to a higher setting, and finally enable him to see. His arms cross loosely over his chest because of it. Instead of watching the gameplay, he opts for watching the way you squint at your screen like you’re diffusing a bomb instead of choosing eye shapes.
“You made yourself prettier,” Satoru states, leaning forward again and taking a look at your screen properly. Outside of your little world and Satoru, Mr. Miyagi is reprimanding a student in the middle rows in a quiet enough voice for not paying attention.
You gasp dramatically and entirely offended. It is by sheer accident that Satoru’s eyes trail down to your tinted lips. “I made myself accurate.”
“No one’s eyes are that shiny.”
The top and bottom of your face curve into each other simultaneously. Your brows furrow downwards into a crinkled line, and your lips form a frown so engineered but deep it makes Satoru smugly smirk at you. “It’s a videogame. Your Mii looks homeless.”
“My Mii looks cool,” Satoru defends, though he’s not even seen his Mii because before this, he was taking notes in second period and you had different classes in second period.
Satoru squints at the virtual iteration of himself on your console. His Mii does not look cool, but mostly because Gojō Satoru, is frankly, not cool. And he’s wearing a geometric-print T-shirt. He has his stark white hair—which you drew on—blue eyes, freakishly tall proportions. You even gave him his stupid glasses he wears to school, the sunglasses. He notices one thing though. “What’s with the eyelashes?”
“You have long eyelashes,” you reply simply as if it’s just a fact of nature. You’re drawing your hair onto your own Mii, though the angle you’re drawing in is a little hard for you to do so. So far away from the console because you do not want to get a scolding from a teacher, it’s kind of pathetic. You still attempt to draw the curve with your stylus though.
“I…” Satoru trails off, “don’t…”
The argument he had in his mouth immediately fizzles through when he opens it. Annoyingly enough, and perfectly fine enough for Satoru, you’re staring directly at him right now. Not at your stupid Mii which you’re either going to name [Name] or your gamertag. No, you’re staring at him; specifically at his eyes. And he has suddenly become hyperaware of the fact that yes, his eyelashes are apparently long, and long enough for them to touch far above his eyelids casually.
Satoru mumbles something that can and will probably only be decoded as whatever and you grin at him in that way a cat does when it’s smug. You continue editing your Mii and Satoru almost thinks it’s ridiculous how you’ve spent one period just making yourself in a stylized game.
You input your Mii’s voice—though you’re guessing because of your teacher. Eventually you tap through the menus rapidly and you end up at your island. For some reason, the only thing Satoru finds interesting in this class is your reactions now. He’s watching your face more than the screen. The way your tongue briefly presses against the inside of your cheek when concentrating. Your shoulders hunching forwards when you’re invested in this damn game. The tiny victorious smile on your face when you get a tiny detail right. Your lips and that lip tint again.
You turn to Satoru and tap on his arm, showing your screen at him and announcing proudly: “This one’s Ieiri.”
Satoru nearly chokes. The Mii looks exhausted and her face looks drawn on mostly. There are eyebags below her eyes, her hair is in that fuckass bob (the one she had to get forcefully because she joined Cheers this year and they had a notorious custom for that) as you call it. She’s also wearing gladiator armor for some reason. Nevertheless, she looks cute, and very customized.
“You made her eyebags too small,” Satoru remarks plainly but there’s an amusement lacing his voice that he would swear is just ironic.
“They’re her good day eyebags.”
Satoru squints. “You made your Mii house next to mine?”
You shake your head, zooming in to a conversation of Suguru with a random character you made that you would not tell Satoru who he’s based off of. “Nuh uh,” you say, “you can’t manually place Mii houses. It’s randomized.”
It’s the second time you’ve turned to look at him, well, not really, but it’s the second time you’ve looked at him in that intense way that should not be used for a life simulation game. Your lips purse into this half-smirk, half-smile. “I mean, you do sit next to me in class.”
Satoru only grimaces at you. You are strangely confident in whatever it is you speak of, even the gibberish you’ve spewn out. It’s Tomodachi Life getting to you. Many, many seconds later passes before the next time you show your screen to Satoru, but the moment you do, a snicker escapes your mouth and the momentum starts.
First, you show him your Switch when the Mii version of Satoru says to you that he wants to be friends with Mii [Name]. Then, you show him when Mii you and Mii him interact at a park and become friends, bonding over ‘Elden Ring’ which Satoru humorously inputted previously. You shove the Switch to him constantly in class now.
It becomes “Satoru your Mii is hungry,” which Satoru responds with “let him starve” only for you to reply that he wants fried rice. Then you tell him that his Mii him has made friends with Kento, that underclassman who’s in one of the same clubs as you.
By seventh period, the sky is almost bathing gold from the sunset. It wants to leak through the windows. Everyone is exhausted. Someone in the back is sleeping face-first into a workbook. Satoru is listening to music on low, half-listening, and a little bit cautious of his volume because his normal 100% made him effectively deaf, and nobody likes him when he’s deaf.
Satoru’s scrolling through his phone when you drop your Switch onto his desk. He looks up and you’re there with all your soft-cladded faux complacency.
“I have a mission for you.”
Satoru instantly says no.
“You don’t even know what it is!” you whine.
“I know. I don’t want to,” he replies with the flattest tone he could muster, though he’s eyeing the handheld console. The game was still running, and it was focused on a Mii of Ieiri shouting at the sea. He recalls that an hour ago you said that Ieiri was your favorite Mii you designed. It’s cute that you made your Miis all… intentionally cute.
You pull one of his earbuds out. “You have to.”
“No,” Satoru says again, “I bought you the game. That’s my contribution.”
“Give us societal contribution,” you argue, seemingly taking no response from the other side other than agreeing with you to play. You hear Satoru mumble about how Tomodachi Life is just digital eugenics. You ignore his nonsensical take and sit next to him. Actually, not next to him at all. You sat yourself on his seat, that small plastic chair meant for one person, and you’re sustaining yourself via your thigh muscles.
You’re pressed against him but it’s not uncomfortable. Well, it is, but mentally it’s not, because your perfume is sweet and your hair smells nice. Satoru realizes quickly two things: you’re not budging at all and playing Tomodachi Life probably isn’t as bad as he’s making it sound like. You’re forcing it upon him anyway whether he wants it or not. “...Kay, can I—redesign the apartment?”
Your face lights up instantly and Satoru can’t tell whether he instantly regrets what he did or instantly loves what he did. “Yes—fuck yes,” you excitedly smile, but then it deflates just a little, just a small backtrack, “but I haven’t gotten the Palette House so… you have to do it later.”
Satoru leers at your screen. “Who the fuck is that?”
You briefly glance at his expression, then back to your game. It’s just one of your Mii characters. Though his hair is spiky, he has this little smirk on his face, and his eyes are a tad bit down-set. You purse your lips into a thin line, “it’s Martin from CORTIS.”
“Christ.”
Tomodachi Life goes on for weeks and one of the key things Satoru remembers during the weeks is that the classroom air conditioning does not improve. If anything, it begins blowing out a gentle, lukewarm sigh that smells like dust and definitely administrative neglect. The playing together part that was not in Satoru’s mental agreement when he decided to buy that game for you starts because you refuse to give him his notes back until he feeds himself—Mii him.
You tell him in a whisper-hiss during third-period English that Mii Satoru is rolling on the floor starving, your Switch across the microscopic gap between your desks. On screen, Mii Satoru is face-down in his apartment throwing a digital tantrum because his stomach is completely empty. You call him dramatic like his real life counterpart and Satoru doesn’t even look up from his phone, where he’s actively watching a breakdown of the lore for some subterranean soulsborn game boss, but his left hand blindly reaches out.
On Tuesday next week, the island population will have grown. This is mostly because you stayed up until three a.m. customizing the underclassmen and ignoring your mathematics homework entirely. Somehow, The Tomodachi Life did infect Satoru because he came from the guy who could barely listen to you yap about the game, to now him playing it in his free time, your console.
You’re sitting together near the vending machines this time while the game hums from your console. Satoru hands you a strawberry milk, his treat, even though you explicitly said no and to just get you the damn milk.
“Thanks,” you grumble.
On the screen, Mii Satoru and Mii [Name] are currently running in small, pixelated circles around a fountain, their tiny digital hands waving—flapping, probably more accurate—in the air. A small text bubble pops up over Mii Satoru’s head: “I think [Name] is really fun to talk to.’
It’s a very stupid thing for his Mii to say, and that’s exactly the reason you’re currently giggling at your console right now. But what’s even stupider is that the sneer on Satoru’s face is not from offense at the idea that he likes you—which is horrifying to him—but the fact that his Mii’s words are punching at his gut at a rate too annoying to ignore. Because something that’s been going on for not a while now, ever since he bought you this damn game, he’s started to notice little things about you that should not be on his mind.
It’s moronic when during a double period of Classical Japanese, universally acknowledged as the most dangerous time of the week, Satoru gets jealous over a Mii confessing its love to a Mii version of you.
You’re sitting on your desk and Satoru is beside you, chair pulled to your side even though it would be counted as a minor inconvenience. The shared earbud between you is laying the tiny, loop-de-loop instrumental of the Tomodachi Life food market. Exams are coming in and Classical Japanese is kicking everyone’s asses (except you and Satoru apparently), in particular by droning on about tenth-century syntax while staring blankly out the window.
Over the past weeks, Satoru has been acting strange, which he always is, but more so. Small incremental changes to his demeanor. But in economics, you learn that rational people think at the margin—incremental changes affect lots of things. You feel the shift subtly, mostly from Satoru suddenly paying extra close attention to your seating distance, to how unnecessarily immersed he is now in the mundanity of your life. And your Mii life.
The mantra is simple: don’t pay much attention to it; Satoru is a weird person in general.
And for the record, his strangeness has brought on a positive side effect. Particularly, him wilfully playing Tomodachi Life. At first it was only when you shove the console to his face, but soon it turned into him asking about the island inhabitants, then him digging into your bag when you aren’t playing on it.
You’re in the middle of brainstorming ideas to redesign the exterior of a Mii home when you see a massive pink icon start flashing violently over a residential building. A heart. Your mouth falls open into a gasp. You and Satoru instantly lean closer to the screen, your cheeks almost touching.
On screen, Mii Nanami is confessing to Mii [Name]. The funny thing is, she’s only getting acquainted with the male Mii. The Mii asks her so directly it hurts and it physically embarrasses the frosty haired man in the real world how bothered he is at the scene playing in front of his eyes.
“Did you tell him to confess?” Satoru asks almost too quickly, leaning in a little closer than necessary.
“No,” you shake your head, examining the scene. “He did it himself…”
Satoru sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. It’s an involuntary reaction, driven by the secret, stupid, and mortifying real feelings for you that have been quietly taking root in his chest over the past few weeks. Looking at the two pocket creatures on the display, a textbook wave of jealousy clenches his heart. Petty and absurd. Entirely directed at a stylized avatar of Kento.
You glance up at his tense profile, a playful knowing hum escaping your lips. “I’m pretty sure she’s gonna reject him. She likes you.”
“My Mii likes you right?” he asks back, a second delayed intentionally.
“Yeah,” you reply easily, your lips pulling into a casual smile, eyes drifting back down to the game. “Not sure about real life, though.”
Satoru’s fingers twitch against his palm rest, but before he can decode the implication of your words, the game cuts to the confrontation. A few dramatic, heavily looped seconds of suspense music play through the console’s speakers before Mii you bows her head, a flat text bubble appearing over her hair. She completely rejects him.
“Oh no…” you frown, a small, performative pout forming for the sake of the digital heartbreak.
“Had it coming,” Satoru deadpans, his shoulders instantly dropping an inch as the tension leaves his frame.
Satoru feels the little voice in his head that tells him what to do scream at him. The embarrassment that wells up inside his heart is nearly too much to handle if it weren’t for the fact that he experienced humiliation by everyone around him—by you, more likely than not—everyday. Thankfully for him, you don’t catch the way he winced at his own thought, realizing he had just gotten jealous of a virtual pocket creature of his underclassmen confessing his love to another pocket creature representing his friend and newly formed crush inside an overpriced game console.
Within the split second of your smile, the one that reaches your eyes and creates tiny little folds at the sides, Satoru has realized that the brain rot you’ve subjected him to is far worse than he had thought. It’s one of the most soul-crushing and pathetic observations he’s ever made about himself. That he’s allowed himself to care this much about your game. And also you.
There comes a point in your academic career and Satoru’s heartbroken psyche where this all stops. Not abruptly. Gradually, not announced, and it starts with you not bringing your Switch with you all the time. The day before it, after the full fifteen weekdays in three weeks, you bring your Switch to school on a Monday and a new skin to install. You spend two hours in the classroom carefully peeling off the adhesive sticker with tweezers to align the vinyl perfectly around the Switch’s vent., You put on joystick caps and make your own damn charm with one of those DIY kits. Satoru watches from the corner of his eye, pretending to read his biology textbook but actually tracking the precise movement of your fingers. It’s a miracle that your grades are so outstanding.
Then the next day, Tuesday, the decorated device is entirely gone. Like you don’t even own one. Your desk is completely bare except for a lone mathematically-inclined textbook and your pencil case.
Satoru spends the first three periods shifting in his seat, his eyes instinctively darting to the space behind your propped up pencil case where the screen usually glows. By lunchtime, he can’t take it anymore. He kicks the back of your chair and asks “Where is it?” which makes you look to his side sleepily. You forgot your charger. Satoru sunk into his blazer with his lips pressing into a flat line on Tuesday. The silence in the classroom feels weirdly heavy without the tinny, digitized mumbles of his own miniature self asking for fried rice.
On Wednesday, the Switch returns, looking pristine in its new skin. You set it down on the corner of your desk and then you don’t touch it. Nada. Not once. Not during ten-minute breaks, not during lunch. Not even when Ieiri openly steals shit from you right in front of your face.
By Friday, only three days before exams, maybe you’ve somehow managed to successfully guilt trip yourself into not touching the device, but the routine has crystallized into something bizarre. You bring the console every single day, placing it on the desk, then completely ignoring its existence while you focus entirely on your chemistry worksheets. You don't ask about the island. You don’t check if anyone is starving. You completely forget to check if the virtual Satoru is still throwing tantrums on the floor.
The shift from careless neglect to an official handover happens on the third day of mid-term exams.
You somehow got unlucky enough to get your own classroom as your exam room. It’s a sticky situation that makes everyone’s uniform cling to their shoulders, but the usual chaos you’ve grown to miss within only three days of this week has been replaced by the frantic, scratchy sounds of mechanical pencils and heavy pages turning. You are entirely submerged in a fortress of mock exam sheets, highlighters, and formulas scribbled onto the margins of your desk. You don’t even bring your usual school bag, just a pastel-colored leather tote; you have two binders(with mocks in them), your Switch, and seven stationery items in it.
Satoru is leaning back in his chair, his long legs stretched out under your desk in a way that forces you to awkwardly adjust your feet around his shoes. You are envious of his leisure in such a horrible season. And you’re envious of his lanky limbs. He isn’t doing his worksheets. Instead, he’s been watching the way your thumb aggressively rubs the side of your temples, a faint, dark smudge of graphite marking your skin.
“Your tiny people are going to starve,” Satoru starts with a mutter, his voice cutting through the heavy silence of those tense, precious thirty minute break periods before the next exam. He nods casually towards the dark console.
You whine softly about how you don’t have enough time, not even looking up from a particularly brutal calculus problem. Your eyes are bloodshot from a four-hour cram session the night before. You tell him if you fail this, your GPA drops, and you are rational somehow; you’d rather let virtual villagers starve than you basically fail at life.
Satoru calls you pathetic and his fingers are already turning the power button on the next second, the screen illuminating his face in the dim classroom light. By the time the final bell rings in the afternoon, signaling the end of the day and those grueling hours of your life—who the fuck made question 23?---you are practically an infected woman in Resident Evil. You’re stuffing loose papers into your backpack with zero coordination, your brain completely fried from back-to-back chemistry and advanced algebra exams.
Satoru stands beside your desk, heavy backpack already slung over one shoulder. He holds out the Switch, the charm dangling from his index finger. You look at the console, then consider, then the long and exhausted sigh that comes out of your is priceless.
“Can you just… take it home with you tonight?” you ask, looking up at him with a tired expression. “If I take it back to my room, I’m going to look at it, and if I look at it, I’m going to play it instead of studying for history,” you grimace. History is fucked. “Just keep them alive until the weekend.”
Satoru freezes for a fraction of a second. His hand hovers in the air between you, the little voice in his head, that one that usually tells him to say something sarcastic or smug, instantly shuts up. “You’re trusting me with your peak fiction?”
“You bought the cartridge,” you say, your tote settling between the crease of your elbow.You give him a small, faint version of your usual cat-like smile.
“Right,” he mutters watching you walk towards the sliding door. When Satoru walks out of the school gates and boards his train home, the Switch is tucked securely into the front pocket of his backpack. He can feel the slight weight of it against his spine too.
Eleven o’clock on Thursday night, Satoru is sprawled sideways across his bed, legs dangling off the mattress while your Switch rests in his broad palms. The only light in his room comes from the screen, illuminating the sharp angles of his face and reflecting in his wide eyes. He had intended to just feed the Miis and log off. But then, the tiny pixelated version of himself started pacing around his little apartment with a pink thought bubble hovering over his head.
Satoru taps it.
“I have feelings for [Name],” Mii Satoru states, his voice completely blank like every single character in this uncanny game despite the gravity of the text. “I want to confess to her. Where should I do it?”
Satoru’s thumb hovers over the directional pad while his heart does this deeply uncomfortable thud against his ribs that would otherwise get made fun of by you. He tells himself very adamantly, with his jaw tightening and all, that this is an algorithm and a randomized social simulation. He aggressively taps the option for the beach anyway.
He watches, entirely frozen, as the game cuts to the sunset-lit shore. Mii Satoru stood there, in a jester suit that was Suguru’s doing apparently, shouting his digital heart out, while Mii [Name] stood opposite him in a cute little dress you made for yourself. Earlier when the prompt asked Satoru to choose the tone of the confession, his hand twitched before he deliberately hit, “Sincerely.”
The little text bubble pops up. “Please go out with me.”
“A beat of agonizing silence passed. Then, Mii [Name] jumps up and down, pink hearts exploding around her little head. “Yes! I’d love to!”
Satoru stares at the screen for a full two minutes. The relationship status turns into Sweethearts. The tinny, cheerful victory music loops through the console’s speakers. He lets out this slow and heavy breath, dropping the Switch onto chest and staring at his ceiling. He felt completely ridiculous. He was Gojō Satoru, and he is currently experiencing a massive spike of adrenaline because two digital pocket creatures were now officially dating.
By Sunday, Satoru has played this game more than you have. Maybe.
You’re in a study group and it’s a complete disaster. By study group, you mean your regular group of friends: that nerd you refuse to call your friend, Satoru, lazy bitch Ieiri, and Suguru who keeps getting thrown chores by the student council. The venue is a cramped, brightly lit family restaurant down the street from school, chosen specifically because it has cheap drink bars and large booths. And close to school, while all your homes are far away. Compromise. The food is delicious, though.
Suguru is twenty minutes late because of a train delay, and Ieiri had texted the group chat a single line—”my stomach hurts, die beautifully without me”---before probably turning off her phone entirely.
You’re sitting with your right leg tucked under the other, faux-leather seat digging into your exposed shorts-clad thighs. A stack of heavily highlighted history notes are spread out in front of you. Your hair is tied up messily, and you’re aggressively stirring a glass of melon soda with a plastic straw. Satoru sits across from you, looking entirely too large for the booth. His gaming laptop is open again and the loud fans are already whirring a baseline beneath the restaurant’s pop music. His focus isn’t even on his tabs. He’s been watching you for ten minutes.
“If I look at this timeline of the Meiji Restoration again, my eyes will fall out,” you announce dramatically, but a mumbled whisper some way too, dropping your mechanical pencil onto the table.. You stretch your arms over your head, letting out a long sigh before your eyes snap to his backpack. “Satoru. Give it.”
Satoru doesn’t need clarification. He reaches into his bag and slides the console across the table, his fingers lingering on the edge of the vinyl skin before letting go. “They’re all alive,” he says, his tone carefully casual as he leans back and crosses his arms.
“You’re a saint,” you hum, immediately booting the console up.
Satoru shifts in his seat, his eyes tracking your face. His chest tightens slightly, waiting for the inevitable shift in your expression when you open Tomodachi Life and see the new relationship status on the top screen. He already has a sarcastic defense lined up. He’s ready to tell you that the game forced his hand.
Instead, you rapidly tap the directional pad and completely bypass the yellow Tomodachi Life icon without a single glance. You scroll two squares over and boot up Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Satoru blinks behind his round glasses. “You’re not checking the island?”
“Later,” you mumble, entirely locked in the loading screen as the little raccoon icon spins in the corner. “I need to check turnip prices before the shop closes. I haven’t weeded my town since Tuesday. If my favorite villager kills himself what will I do, Satoru?”
Satoru stares at you, the sarcastic comment dying instantly in his throat. He lets out a quiet, hollow, and purplish laugh, rubbing the back of his neck as a wave of genuine amusement—and a small spark of irritation at his own foolishness—washes over him. You haven’t even checked. He had spent three days stressing over a polygon relationship, murmuring to himself about how the fuck his relationship with you is ‘that low’ as if it is, and you were currently completely consumed by digital weeds.
“You’re unbelievable,” he mutters, turning back to his laptop screen with a faint, stupid smile pulling at his lips.
Monday arrives with the bleak, heavy atmosphere that only the final day of exam season can bring, but the cheerful, heavy footsteps thud of students being absolutely ecstatic that it’s over. The desks are pulled apart in neat, uniform rows.
It feels strangely empty in the classroom now that you’re back with the Switch and not playing Tomodachi Life but instead listening to anthropomorphic animal villagers babbling about pocket capitalism. Or something. The collective sigh your classroom let out when the final exam was turned in is almost physical. You stay behind to rearrange your bag.
Satoru stands by your desk watching you methodically pack away everything you have. His eyes trail downwards to the strawberry keychain hanging from your zipper and his mind instantly flashes back to his dark bedroom three nights ago. He remembers the exact way your Mii had jumped up and down on the screen, pink hearts exploding around her little digital head.
Sweethearts. God.
You look up from your bag, blinking sleepily through your messy bangs at his silence. Satoru’s posture stays stiff and you know he’ll respond flatly. “You look sick.”
“I am.”
“Stayed up again?” you ask, shifting your Switch from one hand to the other. You offer him a small, sympathetic look, then reach into your bag. “You want my energy drink?”
You look at him properly and your expression softens in that absentminded way it does around him which has now effectively become a problem. His eyes dart around for a couple of split seconds; from your bangs, to those tinted lips of yours, then to the charms on your bag with the loud ass rattles.
He watches the faint, lazy curve of your lips, the casual way you lean against your desk, and the realization hits him with a clarity that has absolutely nothing to do with randomized game algorithms and him staying up for hours to play a Nintendo game. He likes you. A lot. He likes you a lot. Not in the vague, passing way he usually likes things. Not in the temporary fixation way either. It just settles in his chest, all heavy.
It’s embarrassing. And it’s entirely insulting to his ego that a pocket version of himself has more spine on a fictional beach than he does standing right next to your desk. If a bunch of randomized pixels could manage to make you happy enough to explode digital hearts, then fuck it because he feels like a cucked loser playing second fiddle to a handheld.
You wave a hand in front of his face. “Earth to Satoru?”
“Can I friend you?” he asks, then adds, a slightly stubborn smirk finally breaking through his pondering and serious expression. “On Animal Crossing.”