Chapter Text
Two people showed up to Kakyoin Noriaki’s funeral in school uniform.
Kujo Jotaro, the hulking thug well known throughout the school as someone who wouldn’t hesitate to resort to violence against anyone, even a teacher- and you.
---
You remembered with uncomfortable clarity the evening you cycled home from school to find that that the Kakyoin’s family home had closed their gates and pulled their blinds and curtains. You lived nearby, and you had never noticed the house so closed off as it was that evening. Pulled curtains, a closed gate, even the very hedges that neatly bordered their house, well-tended and cared for, looked like they were there to shut the house off from the world. There were more cars outside their house than you had ever seen too. Your neighbourhood was quiet and private; you might have brushed it off as nothing of note. But you couldn’t.
The moment had lodged in your memory. It had festered in your dreams.
When, days later, Jotaro returned to school and Kakyoin did not, your suspicions grew evermore.
You were seated in the back of the classroom, Jotaro several rows ahead of you. His very presence was like a torment to you. You could barely focus on the lessons at hand when he was right there, just some steps away. Something was wrong and he knew what. Agitation caused your leg to wiggle impatiently, your mechanical pencil to be chewed until the barrel cracked.
Your staring caused you to receive some cool looks from the more dedicated of the Kujo Jotaro fan-girls but you couldn’t help it. You put a lot of faith in your gut instincts.
They were telling you something was wrong.
They were telling you Jotaro knew what.
---
‘Kujo-san?’ you asked, finally getting the tall young man’s attention just before he was about to leave the classroom for lunch. ‘Could I meet with you for a moment please?’
You heard the hushed giggling of the other girls milling out of the classroom. They incorrectly assumed that you were taking Jotaro’s return as your opportunity to confess to him. You wouldn’t have been the first, or the second, and he’d only been back at school a handful of hours. But that was not the case. Jotaro stood back for a moment, cautiously, as the rest of the class trailed out for their lunch break. He looked suspiciously at you, mistrustful around most teenage girls, and for a good reason.
Like it or not, Jotaro was popular.
Something he did not seem to appreciate as much as other young men may have.
You looked around the room somewhat awkwardly as you waited for the room to clear. No one shared the same sense of urgency and impatience as you did. It was just a normal Tuesday; it was just a normal lunchtime. You didn’t let your agitation show. You schooled your expression, carefully blank. You hoped you did it well.
You did not.
Jotaro stood tall, with an intimidating edge to his stance. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy. You were a recent transfer to the school, only having spent a semester in the same class as Jotaro before his extended absence. His attendance hadn’t been too stellar before that, but you had already figured that Kujo Jotaro was not the social type. You looked at his rigid posture and wondered if it rang truer as discomfort than impatience.
Is he uncomfortable? You wondered.
Finally, when the room was empty, a task that took longer than anticipated, as students lingered in the classroom in the hopes of leering curiously at the recently returned delinquent, you could talk to him. You knew he wouldn’t talk candidly with others around. Hell, you didn’t even know if he’d talk if it was just the two of you.
You swallowed thickly. Jotaro scared you a little, you weren’t going to lie. His fan-club had been emphatic in asserting that his scariness was really part of his appeal.
You didn’t see it.
Jotaro was scary, yes, but what scared you more was saying what you wished to say. The words were out of your mouth before you could stop them.
Word vomit.
Gross.
‘Kujo-san, what happened to Kakyoin-san?’
That was not what he had expected to hear. You could see him blinking twice, the only sign of his surprise.
Did I catch him off guard?
He lowered his hat.
‘Kakyoin won’t be returning.’
‘Is he okay?’
Jotaro remained silent.
You could see the firm line his lips had created. This was not something he wanted to talk about. But worry had been colouring your every thought, souring them, drawing them darker and darker with every passing hour. Ever since you’d seen the curtain’s closed at the Kakyoin family’s home your very mind had been blackened with concern that felt a lot more like fear. Your thoughts were obfuscated on every other subject but Kakyoin.
You needed to know.
Jotaro knew.
He knew what you didn’t.
You needed to know that your darkest fear, your putrid suspicion was false, that your hunches were wrong.
So you pushed a little harder.
‘Sensei skipped his name in roll call today. That was weird to me. He called out his name every day he was away. I thought something might be up.’
Jotaro looked at you, cool calculation in his eyes.
‘How are you familiar with Kakyoin?’
It was a fair question. Kakyoin kept himself to himself.
‘We’re both in chess club together. He’s the president, though I’m the only other member.’
Jotaro was silent.
‘Has he transferred again?’ you pressed.
Kakyoin had been a fairly recent transfer to your school, but he’d still been there a good few months. You had transferred in on the same day. There had been buzz around the school because of it. One transfer student into a third-year class was unusual; two on the same day had been noteworthy, apparently.
Not to mention one was a handsome young man, and the other, a girl, was a foreigner. That would be you. Students from other classes had tried to sneak peeks at the new students through the window all day. You had felt less like a new student and more like a new attraction in the zoo. As if your first day in a new school, in a new country wasn’t scary enough.
Kakyoin had shared a small nervous smile with you and an alliance had been set. It was tough to be the new kid. You and he had quickly formed a bond. You two had talked a lot in chess club. Well, perhaps not a lot. More than Kakyoin had talked to others at least. If he had transferred again he would have mentioned it to you.
‘No,’ Jotaro said succinctly.
You looked at your shoes for a moment. They were the soft indoor shoes. School policy. That made you think of Kakyoin too. The teachers had been trying to encourage him to purchase the correct school uniform for months. He hadn’t gotten around to it yet, or so he had claimed.
You suspected he enjoyed the individuality.
You had laughed when, on the first day of the second school semester, he had arrived again wearing his uniform, neat and orderly. In his green trench-coat length gakuran with gold buttons and immaculately shined dress shoes, Kakyoin had looked the very picture of respectability. But it was still the wrong school uniform. You had known then for sure. It was an act of rebellion from the model student.
You’d been beating around the bush for too long. You returned your gaze to his face.
‘Is he dead?’ you asked in an anxious breath.
Jotaro’s expression was hard and serious. He once again remained silent, but you didn’t need an answer. You now knew what happened.
Ah.
You looked down, away from Jotaro’s unreadable face, to Kakyoin’s empty desk.
He hadn’t been sick to your knowledge but he was no stranger to violence despite his calm and refined demeanour. You had known his polite honour student act was a façade. You had seen how cruel and callous he could be at times. You knew his life was more violent than many have thought. You’d seen the bruises on his knuckles, when he lifted chess pieces. You’d seen how quickly he would resort to violence when he felt it was needed.
‘Do his parents know what happened?’ you asked. You suspected his death hadn’t been natural.
‘They do. The school has been informed too. Until it’s announced you can’t tell anyone.’
‘I won’t tell anyone,’ you said.
And even if I wanted to, it’s not as if I have anyone to tell, you thought.
‘You better not.’
‘I don’t need threats,’ you said coolly.
‘It wasn’t a threat.’
It sure sounded like one though, Kujo-san.
You couldn’t help the tears from welling up at the news. You had suspected, or rather dreaded as much, since you had cycled past the Kakyoin home that evening just days before. You had almost attributed your macabre thoughts to you overthinking it, a natural pessimism and tendency to worry.
Almost.
Your gut had been right.
It didn’t feel good.
You walked away, too choked up to thank Jotaro for his honesty, rushing to the bathroom for a little moment of privacy and grieving. You ignored the glances of the other girls in your class who had presumed that Jotaro had reacted negatively to your love confession and turned you down, as he had done to every other girl who had been brave enough or rather, fool enough to confess. Their looked weren’t sympathetic, and looked awfully close to gloating.
Fine, let them think I’ve been rejected, you thought.
You would have preferred that over losing the only friend you had.
---
News was released a few days later about the passing of Noriaki Kakyoin through the form of a whole school assembly. The news was met with shock and tears from your classmates. But you didn’t miss the murmurs of the students who didn’t recognise him.
‘Was he new?’
‘I thought he had just joined this semester.’
‘Who was it? The new kid?’
You tried to drown it out. It wasn’t their fault they didn’t know him. He hadn’t been an easy guy to know. He preferred to keep people at arm’s length.
But in grief, rationality could be hard to find. You had to bite your tongue so you didn’t snap at them, or tell them to have some respect for the dead. Would they have listened to you? You doubted it. You were just another outcast. Another stranger whose name they couldn’t have recalled.
The grief, the anger, the mourning, it all led you to now. Standing in the cool, autumnal, drizzling rain, dressed in in your school uniform when you felt black would have been more appropriate, and mourning the burial of your friend.
You’d never seen it coming.
Blind-sided.
Death could be like that you found. It wasn’t kind enough to always herald its approach. There wasn’t always a harbinger or portent, sometimes it was announced by silence and a curtain closed when it shouldn’t have been.
---
You never asked Jotaro why he had known Kakyoin was dead before anyone else in the school. You think he respected your lack of questions. Though it was really because you weren’t sure you wanted to know the answer.
You assumed their shared long absence had been spent together, though doing what, you had no idea. The pair had grown close before they had both disappeared for months on end. Or rather, they had been reported to have fought, and for two violently solitary people, that was enough.
Jotaro, dressed in his black gakuran, had a deep tan which he did not have before he had taken the time off school. It struck you that he had most likely been abroad. The weather in Japan had remained temperate, and not warm enough to tan his skin that amount.
Would Kakyoin-san have been tanned too? You wondered, anything to distract you from the funeral ceremony in the rain.
Kakyoin would have hated that. You could imagine he would have taken greater precautions to protect his skin than Jotaro. The closed casket before his cremation prevented you from ever finding out. You didn’t mind though. The thought of seeing his body lying there made tears well anew in your eyes.
‘Are you okay?’ You had asked Jotaro softly at Kakyoin’s graveside. You had a clean tissue held out for him in case he needed it.
His face was stony but not openly sad. It was as if he had no tears to shed. You worried he was bottling up his grief.
Either that or Jotaro Kujo really was made of tougher shit that you had thought humanly possible.
Though admittedly, he did seem pretty tough.
You had even heard he’d been arrested.
You took the tissue back and put it in your pocket.
‘I’ll just keep one here in case you need it,’ you sniffed, you dabbing your reddened eyes with your already soaked tissue.
You both focused your attention back to the service and the small urn being placed into the plot before you.
You were holding back tears, trying to keep your emotions in check so much your hands were trembling as the ceremony grew to a close. You pulled out another tissue, a pointless task to dry your face with tears still forming anew. You breathed in and out slowly, to regulate your breathing and to slow your heart rate.
You were allowed to be sad at the funeral of a friend. But when the earth covered the urn and before you was a plot of freshly moved earth, the tears slowed.
It was the end of the ceremony but your mourning had only just begun.
---
It felt almost surreal to return to school after the funeral and pretend like everything was okay, as if you hadn’t spent the last hour sobbing at a friend’s graveside. The last funeral you had attended was your mother’s funeral, and when she was buried it felt like the whole world had ground to a stop. Time had frozen. Even now you couldn’t recall how long you had taken off school. Days? Weeks? You weren’t sure.
To walk from the graveyard to where Kakyoin was now interred, back to the school seemed like an unreal experience. Perhaps that was why you didn’t notice Jotaro walking in front of you for the majority of the journey.
Even if you had, neither of you were in a speaking mood.
You did notice him however when you returned to the school grounds and you both stopped to change from your outdoor shoes into your indoor shoes at your lockers. You waited for him to finish changing his shoes. You would cause less interruption if you both went into class together. Clearly Jotaro was thinking the same thing because he didn’t question your lingering.
‘Ah, you’re back,’ your teacher said when he saw you two enter the classroom. It was History class and your professor was an energetic younger man whose lack of skills was more than made up for in enthusiasm.
‘We were just preparing and revising for the upcoming mid-term exams.’
Everyone else in your class was working in small groups and your normally neat classroom looked a lot more disorganised than usual. The teacher turned to you with a sympathetic smile on his face.
‘As you were both a little late everyone else has been grouped off. But I’m sure you don’t mind helping Kujo-kun catch up on the work he’s missed in his absence?’
You blinked. That was no simple task. Jotaro had missed over two months of class.
‘That’s excellent,’ your teacher said, mistaking your silence for acceptance.
Any protest faded before they made it to your lips.
You knew what your History teacher was like, too enthusiastic about exams and not enthusiastic enough about teaching his students the syllabus. Everyone had ended up teaching themselves all they needed to know anyway.
I’ve already taught myself, I could teach Kujo-san too, you rationalised, somewhat tentatively. It wasn’t like you had much other choice.
You sat at your desk, then looked up to where Jotaro was seated a number of desks in front of you. He was being handed a stack of papers from the teacher. It wasn’t just the work he had missed for history class. It couldn’t possibly have been.
It was work from every class.
Am I expected to help with all that as well?
You approached Jotaro cautiously, taking the empty chair from your desk and putting it beside his desk. Jotaro was a hard man to read, but he looked a little overwhelmed from the work placed before him. You could see his hands twitching, fighting the urge to just stand up and leave.
When you had first joined the school here, your first time attending school in Japan, you had felt similarly overwhelmed. Everything was different here. You were dealing with a new language, and you were expected to be on the same level of your peers despite the fact that you hadn’t joined in the beginning of the school year.
‘Don’t worry, Kujo-san.’ you said. ‘It might be a lot but you’ll be able to work through it quicker than you think.’
Jotaro said something under his breath that you suspected might have been very rude.
You elected to ignore it. It wasn’t aimed towards you anyway.
You hoped.
You and Jotaro worked through the pile of work all class. You took his work and divided it by subject. Then you focused on his missed History work as that was the current class you were in. It proved to be a surprisingly useful revision aid for you to recap through all the work you had already done in the last few months and Jotaro was intelligent and dealt with the work quickly. As the hours passed, even the stinging in your eyes faded, the exhaustion that crying often covered you in a muggy blanket of depressed fatigue had lifted from the familiar routine of school work. It wasn’t comfort, it was distraction, but for now that was enough.
The bell rang and it was the end of the school day. Everyone stood up and began packing away. You rose to your feet too, but remain before Jotaro’s desk.
‘It’s club time now,’ you said to Jotaro. ‘I’m the only member of the chess club so if you’d like you can come along and keep working through the classwork you’ve missed. That way I’ll be able to give you some assistance if needs be.’
Jotaro looked at the small mountain of sheets before him and sighed.
‘Fine.’
He sounded like he’d have accepted root canal surgery without general anaesthetic just as enthusiastically.
You nodded and took your chair back to your desk, packing up your own school things.
---
In the room reserved for the chess club, the tables could be moved freely for whatever the club required. You pushed two desks together which made it easier for Jotaro to spread his work out and easier for you to show him things and explain them. He worked quickly and efficiently clearly eager to get his task finished with as soon as possible. This was your final year in high school and you suspected Jotaro did not like the idea of having to repeat a year.
As the days went on it became a habit for Jotaro to come to the chess club room after school hours and continue through his catch-up work. Quickly it became clear he didn’t rely on your assistance and only needed the occasional clarification that the textbooks couldn’t provide him. You were happy to help when needed but mostly you just played chess, or stared out the window and watched the leaves brown and fall from the trees or be swept by the wind.
As loathe as you were to admit it with Kakyoin’s death the chess club had all but died too. You were the only remaining member and school rules stated that a club required two members or more. It wasn’t a surprise to you then, when around a week later, the teacher appointed to the chess club, a tall thin man with a gaunt face and thick framed glasses who taught mathematics, announced to you that soon the room would be needed for other group activities.
‘You know how it is,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Numbers have been diminished and it is school policy I’m afraid. The chess club will have to be disbanded. The debate club have been asking for this room for months, and now we have no reason to refuse. They’ll have access to it as of next week.’
What could you say? You couldn’t protest against it. It was school policy. But at the same time, it seemed like a snub against Kakyoin’s memory that the club he had presided over should fall so quickly after he was gone.
‘I can do a drive, Okamoto-Sensei,’ you said almost desperately. ‘I’ll try and recruit new members.’
‘It’s too late in the school year for that I’m sure,’ the gaunt teacher said bluntly. ‘Everyone has already chosen their clubs and activities for the year.’
‘Kakyoin-san put a lot of work and effort into this club-’
‘I know it’s hard given the circumstances but I’m afraid-’
‘I’ll join,’ a low voice said.
You turned to Jotaro who had, until now, seemed entirely disinterested in the conversation that had been going on in the same room as him.
Perhaps I’m not the only one eager to preserve Kaykoin’s memory, you thought.
‘Very well,’ the teacher said. He didn’t look very amused at the idea of Jotaro joining the chess club.
It seemed to you that he would very much prefer no chess club over a chess club with thugs in its membership.
‘If you fill out the appropriate forms, I shall inform the debate club,’ he span on his heel and walked away stiffly.
‘Thank-you Kujo-san,’ you said earnestly.
He lowered his cap, but didn’t reply.
You smiled. He had done enough.
The next day Jotaro came bearing the sign-up sheet to join the chess club. He handed it to you then sat down to continue his catching up with school work.
You looked at it. Why had he given it to you?
Well, because there was no one else to give it to now.
I guess this makes me president of the chess club then.
You went to find Okamoto-Sensei to give him the sheet before returning to the club room. He took the sheet with a mixture of disbelief and disappointment. Jotaro didn’t have many fans among the teaching staff. Okamoto-Sensei seemed to be one of his more outspoken opponents.
‘As an official member of the chess club, do you want to play some chess?’ you asked Jotaro when you returned.
He dismissed the question with a snort.
‘That’s fine, I don’t mind,’ you said easily. ‘You know you don’t really need to hang around here either, if you don’t want to. If I’m the president now I can just pretend you are attending meetings and coming to practices.’
‘Noted,’ he said, not looking up from his papers.
But Jotaro seemed content to continue attending club activities as he caught up on his missed work. You were content to just play chess against yourself. It gave you double the challenge. It was how you had passed the time in the chess club since Kakyoin left. You were almost used to it now.
There were occasional breaks in the easy silence when you answered any questions Jotaro had about missed classwork and homework, which you answered to the best of your abilities. But Jotaro was much smarter than his teachers and peers gave him credit for and you weren’t too sure how much help you really were to him. You tried your best regardless.
As the days turned to weeks, the breaks in the silence often grew more conversational.
‘Don’t you go to cram school?’ you asked him one day as you picked up a black pawn you had just beat and placed it to the side of the chess board.
‘No, too much work.’
You smiled. That sounded like Jotaro.
‘Oh? Me neither. I don’t have a good reason not to go, though. It just seems like unnecessary stress.’
‘I agree,’ he said as he turned over a page in his textbook.
This reminds me of being in the club with Kakyoin-san, you idly mused as you moved a black piece on the board, eager to make up for the earlier loss of the black pawn. Just chess and a little conversation.
The grief over his passing was lessening day by day. You had no doubt in your mind that Jotaro and the chess club were a major part in that.
You hoped someday, you would only have the precious memories of your time spent with Kakyoin in chess club and not the pain that still lingered with it.