Akira stood silent, halting the steps of the other two he was walking with- something that started to be a regular occurrence.
'Why is he waiting for me here?!' Akira exclaimed silently within himself, as his eyebrows wrinkled into an expression of confusion.
He didn't change his facial expressions often, so the the boy's beside him caught on quickly, and traced his gaze to another boy around their age, leaning against the railings before the station entrance as if he was waiting for someone.
As they stared, the young man caught a glance of them. When his eyes met with Akira's, a scowl quickly spread across his face as his lips slipped out,
"You're late!"
Akira forced himself to hold back a sigh but failed. His shoulders slumped as he made a very visible and audible sigh of contempt.
"I thought we agreed to meet at my apartment," He said blandly, staring at the boy with waist-length long blonde hair that was weaved into a single loose braid behind him, and bright electric blue eyes he was very familiar with.
"Lesley."
The boys beside Akira were astounded. It wasn't that they were too surprised, it was just that they had never pictured their silent classmate engaging actively in a conversation with another person other than them.
"Now is better than later," He responded vaguely, now turning to gaze at the other two that stood behind him. His eyes were a brighter color of blue than Akira's, and carried a flint of intimidation in them.
As he gazed at the boys, Mamoru's blood ran cold. He was both drawn in by his bright and defined looks, and at the same time, frightened at his intimidating glare.
"You had a friend?" Hikaru asked, looking at Lesley intently. "This was unexpected. I didn't think you could make friends."
"He's a foreigner too," Mamoru stated, finally breaking eye contact with the intimidating foreigner. "Are you maybe related?"
"N-"
"Yes," Lesley answered, cutting Akira off before he could deny it. "What's it to you?"
Akira was a little take aback, and wondered what Lesley was up to. He was about to introduce him as a co-worker, which was the official excuse the team had agreed to go with if they were ever caught in public together outside the bar. 'So why is Lesley saying we are related?' He wondered.
"Oh, nothing," Mamoru responded shyly.
"You just look nothing alike," Hikaru said bluntly.
"We're third cousins from our moms' side," Lesley answered, already weary of the conversation. "Right Daisy?"
"It's Lily," Akira sighed exhaustedly, mostly weary of him, rather than the conversation.
"Yeah," Lesley replied in slight. Not bothering to fix the blunder he spoke. "Let's go."
Akira exhaled as he watched Lesley start to walk off ahead of him.
"How did he even get in without a student ID?" Mamoru said, suddenly realizing that the only people who could use the school train were teachers and students. A visitors pass could be given at the gate if the person being visited contacted the station office and agreed, but seeing as Akira was equally surprised to see him, he wouldn't have been the one to let him through.
Akira waved the question off, and waved them good bye.
"Sorry, I'll go on ahead. See you tomorrow."
They waved good bye as well, before Akira ran ahead to catch up to Lesley's pace.
"So you made friends at school," Lesley remarked, as they waited to board the train together. "That's unexpected."
Akira gazed at the floor in silence, not answering Lesley's question, and entered the train as soon as the doors slid open. As they stood on the train, he noticed more gazes on him that usual. It was mostly because of Lesley. He stood out even more than Akira did on his first day. His long blonde hair that reached his waist, and his really bright blue eyes were eye catching enough- enough for people to mistake him as an outer world alien. But his sense of style was also equally as flashy.
He wore a baseball cap, managing to pass the braided end of his hair through the opening, a grey leather jacket, a plain sky blue inner shirt that complemented his eyes nicely, black and white checkered pants that stood out individually, and then knee-high laced converse. He seemed like a graceful delinquent. The big black bag he carried behind him, slung around his shoulder was also very conspicuous.
Riding the train while standing alongside him was like begging to be noticed and gawked at by everyone on the train. At least when he was alone they all eventually looked away at some point, though some, from time to time, still stole peeks at him, but now, they didn't take their eyes off them until they got off the train at the station. Some female students even took photos of the two of them. Of course as they were taking it, Akira was on his device delating every trace, and photo of the two of them there was on the internet, and used a black network software to identify their faces on the phones of people in their proximity and deleted the photos as soon as they were being taken.
It was a lot of effort and he was exhausted. He had never really had any terrible feelings towards Lesley, other than occasionally holding a feeling of contempt towards him. But now, he was seriously considering deeply hating this guy as much as he hated him.
The part that irked him the most was that, through out the entire train ride, he was aware of the commotion he was causing, but still didn't attempt to help as he kept playing a game on his phone. He was truly bothersome.
"This is her address," Lesley said, handing Akira a piece of paper. "Go there."
How very vague and pinpoint of you, Akira thought as he took the piece of paper from him.
"Where will you be?" Akira asked out of concern. Lesley was one of the members who were reliable but very unpredictable.
"I'll be elsewhere," Lesley said, just as vague as he had talked before.
"Shouldn't we scout out her house together?" Akira said, mostly saying it out of worry that Lesley would be up to something else while he was focused on scoping out their target's house, even though he preferred to work alone.
"It's called division of labor dandelion," Lesley scoffed, opening his phone and sending out a video with information to Akira's phone.
Looking it over, Akira more or less figured out where and what Lesley would be doing.
"I'll tail her to keep an eye on her while you canvas her house," Lesley said, taking out a pair of sunglasses he held in the inner pocket of his jacket. "Try to find the original copy of that recording while you're at it."
As the sentence finished its spew from his mouth, he started to trudge off, purposely bumping into Akira's shoulder as he did. He was slightly taller than Akira, so his figure collided with Akira's more than he intended but he didn't bother apologizing, and Akira didn't bother demanding for one. He knew he wouldn't get so much as an exclamation even if he'd tried.
"Später!" He said with a wave from behind as he crossed the road using the pedestrian bridge, leaving Akira alone to handle the more complex matters.
As he looked over the new information Lesley had sent over to him, he sighed. "This is going to be bothersome. Isn't this place a fortress than it is a house?"