600ml replied to your post : 3rd years with 6, 7, 8, 9
nozomi with mild social anxiety!! please indulge us
as background, I headcanon Nozomi moving around a ton because she’s an orphan and she was moving between foster homes. I tend to go with her parents giving her up, too, as opposed to dying, to get the full effect of that “my parents didnt want me” angst
so! Nozomi’s this little girl who just wants a family, or a friend, or at the very least someone who likes her. Someone who wants her around. She goes to school and sees all these girls running around and talking with each and having a good time, and Nozomi desperately wants to join in. She’s scared, though. What if they reject her? What if they throw her away like every adult in her life eventually does? So she tends to hover on the edge of friend groups, if anything, because she’s torn between becoming friends or staying alone but safe.
Moving around all the time only makes this worse. If she stayed at one school, eventually she’d become friendly with girls through partner activities, and that would lead to actual friendship in the end. Except she does she transfer schools, so that can’t happen. Over time, Nozomi’s desire for friendship and her fear of reaching out turn into anxiety. Even the thought of trying to scares her, and she closes herself off.
And then she enters middle school, and she realizes she’s gay, and that only makes it worse. Does she want to be friends with these girls because she wants friends? Or is it something else? How does she tell if she’s being friendly or weird? Where are the boundaries?
Nozomi, as someone with zero social skills at this point, decides, “I don’t want to do something that will accidentally be weird and get people mad at me. Instead I’m going to be purposely weird, and then people will get mad at me for that instead of being mad at me for being me.”
(aka lets take a 50/50 win/lose situation and make it 100% lose. best idea ever)
This leads to an actual realistic reason for Nozomi’s boob grabbing. Middle school girls can be touchy-feely with each other, and some of them will compare chest size as puberty hits. Nozomi, who wants to join in on the touchy-feely action because she’s starved for physical affection and also wants to fit in, decides to start her boob grabbing deal. She sorta ends up in the class clown kinda position, where no one really likes her, but they think she’s funny sometimes, and they laugh at what she does. It’s not a good position to be in, but it’s better than what she had before.
Then comes high school, and Nozomi moves herself out of foster care and gets an apartment, and is terrified at the idea of being at one school for three years. She doesn’t want to be “that weird kid” for three years, but she doesn’t know what else to be.
Her saving grace is Eli. Eli, who’s as dense as a brick and has the social skills to match, and who won’t know any better if Nozomi does something weird. For the first time ever, Nozomi has a chance to be herself. To experiment. To see what kinds of actions and words are acceptable, without someone who will judge her.
So slowly, Nozomi learns. Eli learns. They help each other, without even realizing it. And in her second year, Nozomi is brave enough to reach out to Nico. And in her third year, muse. A group of girls with similar struggles and similar pains.
Little by little, Nozomi overcomes her anxiety. It still comes back to haunt her, sometimes. When she wants physical affection, and knows she can ask for it, but remnants of fear hold her back. Or when she sees everyone laughing together as a group, and for a moment she thinks “they dont need me” and get scared they’ll throw her away.
Luckily for her, Eli has also managed to pick up some social skills (kinda) and is always able to reassure her, and tell her that no matter what she does, they’ll always love her.
