Cold Hearts Ch 12 School Daze
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Light huffed to himself in perplexed annoyance as school went on as if his life hadn’t changed completely. He limped along, his cane tapping obnoxiously against the linoleum so that the resulting sound was embarrassingly loud to his ears. The humiliation levels compounded when all of his classmates would stop and stare, as well as “whisper” and point. From what he’d overheard, apparently the prevailing theory among the stupid… er student body was that his mysterious nurse boyfriend shagged him so much he couldn’t walk straight without a cane. Light’s fist tightened around the cane in an angry grip. He thought he was showing a considerable amount of self-restraint seeing as he hadn’t yet struck them over the heads with it but, as he constantly reminded himself, he was doing all this to help clear his name and that murdering his classmates would probably be a mark against his innocence.
Light entered the cafeteria to more whispers and stares-and here he’d thought that they would’ve all been done with their inane gawking by lunchtime. He ignored them and found his own table to sit and eat lunch alone as he preferred to do but for some reason today Taro had decided he needed to sit down next to him and began stuffing his face with wasabi-flavored seaweed crackers. Light made a face as Taro popped more of the spicy black crisps into his mouth. How the chubby boy hadn’t burned a hole in his stomach already Light would never know. Light hoped he wasn’t one of the ones that had been trying to corner him out of interest now that the word was out that he was gay-he’d known Taro since like, forever, and that would be beyond awkward. There had been a surprising number of them, despite Light’s announcement that he was already in a steady relationship, much to his listening boyfriend’s ever-increasing annoyance.
Light cringed, his face forming a distinctive moue of distaste as his awkward friend spilled soy sauce down his shirt front… and practically everywhere else within a five mile radius. This was why Light usually preferred to eat lunch alone. And yes, Light was well aware that that was a somewhat snobby attitude to take but eating alone greatly simplified things. He simply preferred his own company. Or L’s. He didn’t mind eating lunch with L. For all the detective’s other faults and bizarre eating habits he never spilled his food. The detective’s white sweaters were always spotless and free of food stains-as if L would ever allow one of his precious sweets to escape!
Light ate his lunch, the bento box care package his mother had sent along, in silence, reflecting on his day so far and tried not to think of L-because surely that would do nothing to improve the man’s over-inflated ego. Light supposed the good news was he wasn’t dead yet. He’d waited a tense forty seconds after his detractor had left and nothing happened. The seconds turned into minutes, then hours and class periods and decided that if Kira had heard his speech he probably wasn’t going to kill him right away.
If Kira is here he probably wanted to know what I know first. For all I know he may be controlling me right now. That’s what I would do if I was… No. Don’t go there. It’s not good for your mental health.
Light had tried to make note of any odd or suspicious occurrences but this was made difficult seeing as everyone was acting odd around him due to his outing though he had gotten some particularly weird vibes during homeroom when he had stopped at the teacher’s desk, bringing his usual apple for Hayami-sensei, his English teacher.
Rain or shine the Yagami family’s next door neighbors always brought over the surplus of apples from their garden so Light had started bringing in an apple a day for the teacher as something of a joke that over years had slowly evolved into a ritual. He had endured despite the irritated looks from his classmates and the accusations that he was “sucking up” but for some reason it seemed that much worse today-Yamamoto even seemed furious with him. Light didn’t know what his problem was-it was just an apple and, again, it was practically a ritual that he had done all the time. So why get mad about it now? Had he committed some social faux pas? Was there some sort of code regarding the whole… uh, gay thing that he didn’t know about? Light didn’t even know who to ask or even how to ask without offending anyone either. Maybe Ryuuzaki knew what was going on. Maybe he could ask him.
Provided I survive high school. Light thought ruefully as he ducked into his chemistry class early in order to avoid another confrontation with Sudou. While the asshole jock and his buddies could follow him into the classroom they could never get away with fighting with him in the chem. lab seeing as Fujiwara-sensei was a no nonsense sort of professor who would stick them all in detention until they were thirty.
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