talk, walk, back your shit up
Ryuji wants to talk about how great it feels to be able to run again, but how lonely he is all by himself. How he has only a few friends, but no one he can really trust. Not like the Phantom Thieves. He doesn’t think he’ll ever find friends like the ones he left behind here in Tokyo. The friends that are leaving him behind as they go on to actually do things with their lives.
And Ryuji’s stuck. He’s afraid that if he doesn’t do something about it he’s going to get permanently glued down.
Or.
Ryuji goes back to Tokyo and gets kisses from the girls.
Ann’s not surprised when Ryuji tells her that he knows how to braid. Honestly, if it was anyone else but Ann, he’d be surprised that they were not surprised. But it’s Ann, one of the few people in the world who know him almost as well as his own mother. For better or for worse, they’re each other’s best friends.
“Where did you learn?” Ann asks, taking her hair out of her signature pigtails and shaking the curls out. Ann’s hair is controlled chaos. It puffs out in every direction, her anti humidity hair products badly losing the war against Tokyo’s summer wetness. But there are indents where the ponytails were, Ann’s hair stubborn to lose their iconic shape.
Ryuji is sitting down on the edge of her bed. Ann sits in between his legs. She hands Ryuji her hairbrush and he gets to work.
He sections off her hair first, right down the middle. He’s found it easier this way. It would be easier with wet hair, but even though Ann had showered she had refused to get her hair wet. The reason for it goes way above Ryuji’s head. “When my mom isn’t working the night shifts, she has me braid her hair after she showers. I used to hate it at first. But now I just find it calming. I sometimes braid Akira’s hair, but it’s too short to really do anything.”
Ann snickers. “You’re such a momma’s boy.”
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