You didn’t know Kujo Jotaro. Not really.

Few people did - few people do, you should say. Sure, the flocks of chattering, bubbly girls, inexorably drawn to him like a swarm of flies to honey, always claim that they do, that the time they spend in each other’s presence really means something, but you know better than to believe that. He rarely speaks, and when he does, it’s the furthest thing from friendly - all teeth and short, snappy remarks - and then he’s back to the resting bitch face and dour silence. You really don’t understand the appeal, and you always try your hardest to stay out of the way whenever you hear that shrill chorus of “JoJo” wafting down the school stairway.

Or at least, that was how it was before his disappearance.

At first, you hardly noticed anything unusual. Kujo seemed the type to skip school, he almost certainly had in the past, and in all honesty, you cared very little. There were other things to worry about, more important and immediate than the school’s prime delinquent going missing.

And then a few days turned into a week. A week turned into two. Two weeks to a month. The more time passed, the more rumors began to surface, especially after a pair of particularly daring second-years decided to take a look around Kujo’s house, reporting back to their classmates about the large, unfamiliar vehicles parked outside with English lettering on them. Information quickly spread, reaching you without much of a hassle, and by that point you had to admit that you were a little intrigued. It didn’t exactly help that Kujo seemed to be the only thing on anyone’s mind. Miwa, who sits in front of you, had made that fact annoyingly clear with her strange theories and baseless deductions.

Stories swirled around like insects - someone had seen Kujo approaching the nurse’s office on his last day, a few more corroborated that story with their own, of him falling on the stairs, another boy brought up the fact that he had apparently been in jail for a few days beforehand, and from all of those facts, the intrigue began to ripen.

Then Kujo came back, and all of that was cut short. He’d been gone for so long that you almost forgot that he was a real person and not just a mildly interesting source of gossip, but after two months and a week with no word, you hear the telltale squeals once again, the slap of leather loafers against the school pavement.

And despite yourself, something bothers you. You didn’t know Kujo, you don’t know Kujo, that much is certain. But you see, far too clearly, like you’ve suddenly been gifted with the eyes of a bird of prey, that something about him has changed.

The old Kujo was nothing but rough when you had the misfortune of crossing paths with him in the hallways or the school grounds. He was large, imposing, almost careless in the way he moved, often the recipient of small scratches, banged elbows, little wounds that hardly seemed to bother him. The Kujo you see now...prowls. There’s an almost unnatural grace in the way he moves, as if each and every step is deliberately chosen, planned out ahead of him. It’s as though he’s scoping everything out, his eyes keen and sharp but with something very old behind them that you can’t quite pin down.

He almost certainly notices you observing him whenever you do, despite your best efforts to keep yourself tucked away and out of harm’s range. He doesn’t do anything except pierce through you with that gaze, the one that parts crowds of students like the blade of a knife. You’re unnerved. So is everyone else.

He was always on the quiet side, but his silence has a much different weight to it. He was never one for putting in more effort than necessary when it comes to schoolwork, but it seems to you that he’s stopped caring altogether. He comes to school every day, that expressionless mask never wavering, and leaves the second the bell rings. Days, weeks pass without a single fight, without an admonishment from a teacher about insubordination or otherwise bad behavior, without...anything.

Miwa taps on your shoulder, whispers in your ear, offering a piece of gossip that she’s likely already spread to anyone else who will listen. Apparently, a girl from her lacrosse team knows Kujo’s mother - and she was sick with a severe case of pneumonia until recently. It’s strange, she says, shrugging, if he was home taking care of her, the classmates who came by should have seen him.

She gives you another tidbit a few days later. Koizumi, a friend of hers, spotted Kujo checking in to the hospital near Mitaka less than fifteen minutes after the school day had ended. Not just once, but two days in a row. His mother’s perfectly fine now, though, according to Miwa’s lacrosse friend, so it can’t be her that he’s visiting.

You almost consider following Kujo from school that day to see for yourself, but decide against it. You might be curious, but you’re not suicidal, so you’ll just have to take her word for it.

More time passes. You find yourself fixating on your classmate more than you ever thought you would. You make mental notes, fueled by an almost voyeuristic interest. How Kujo takes in his surroundings, how he seems to know every single thing around him. How he flinches away from dogs in particular, as seen when a group of girls smuggled their puppies onto the school grounds one day during lunch. Did something happen with a dog? You can’t remember Kujo ever having one himself.

The middle of February is when things go south for the first time. You’re standing in the gym, half-listening to the teacher’s instructions regarding the day’s volleyball match, when you notice a stringy, smug-looking boy sniggering to his small pack of friends in the corner of the room. He breaks away from the group, approaching Kujo from behind, who’s standing there near the wall with his eyes focused on the door. You watch as the boy grins, flexing his fingers like claws, and leaps towards Kujo with a shout.

It’s over in the span of a second. You’re not entirely sure what happened, but the next thing you know the boy is sent flying across the room, his back colliding with the wall with an audible crack. He falls to the floor, coughing, a trickle of blood dripping from his mouth. Kujo’s just standing there, having turned on his heel in the blink of an eye, his shoulders tensed and hands balled into fists.

But his eyes are wide, shocked, almost. He blinks, once, twice, staring at the scene in front of him, the teacher gasping and rushing to the aid of the other boy, the students covering their mouths and whispering. The teacher asks a girl next to her to call for an ambulance. Kujo doesn’t stay, turning and walking out of the gym, gone before anyone else can call him back.

He’s not at school for a week afterwards.

Kujo comes back, eventually, a little paler than before, a little more tired. He doesn’t say a word. No one hears him speak for weeks. Somehow, he seems to have become the least disruptive person in class. You pass by the guidance office one day, glancing through the windows to see him sitting in one of the chairs, flanked by a blonde woman you don’t recognize who’s seemingly in the middle of a conversation with the counselor. Kujo’s staring resolutely at the floor. You decide to leave.

Near the beginning of March, the boy who was injured in gym returns to school, surrounded by a small crowd of curious students. He doesn’t know what happened, either - he sighs, shakes his head, and says something about being socked in the chest by nothing, in the wake of the questions around him. He’s made a full recovery, thankfully, but there’s an odd, vague air of guilt that he carries with him for the rest of the term. A few of the girls who once followed Kujo around like dogs in search of treats become too paranoid, whispering amongst themselves that the real him is gone, that there’s something peculiar and dangerous wearing his face.

The next day, Miwa comes into class grinning. She makes a beeline over to you, and without even thinking about it you ask her what she knows. Apparently, she saw Kujo at the hospital again, already on his way out by the time she got there. But that wasn’t the interesting part - the interesting part was that whatever he was doing there, he was smiling. You tell her you can’t envision that at all, and she crosses her arms, asking if you think she’s lying. You say no; you honestly don’t know why anyone would lie about that.

Still, you have to admit that the concept is a little on the creepy side.

About a week before the end of the semester, someone you’ve never seen before shows up by the school gates, a boy with bright, shockingly red hair. You’re on your way down the stairs when you notice him, and despite the fact that he’s wearing the uniform, he looks strangely out of place. It’s only through eavesdropping on passing chatter that you learn he’s actually been here before, if only for a day - his name’s Kakyoin, if the people you pass by aren’t mistaken.

Kakyoin has an unexpectedly lovely laugh and a sense of profound cheerfulness that you feel as though you don’t entirely understand. He also has prominent scars across his eyes, a slightly odd posture, a gait that seems strained at points. The weirdest thing about him, though, is the fact that Kujo now spends most of his time nearby. They obviously know each other, judging by the glances that you manage to sneak of the two of them on the roof, eating lunch, Kujo taking long drags of his cigarettes.

It’s subtle, but it’s the first time you’ve seen Kujo emote since he returned. He’s still quiet, but there’s something much more peaceful about it than ever before. The girls’ attention seems to spring back if not double at this, and it’s not unusual on any given day to catch one or two stuffing notes into his locker with giddy, loopy grins on their faces. This never goes anywhere - Kujo hardly touches said locker anymore - but they keep on scheming and giggling amongst themselves, acting like thieves planning a heist.

There’s another person, too, some foreign white man with silver hair who’s waiting near the top of the stairs one day, and when school lets out and Kujo spots him he goes off running, tackling the man to the ground before anyone can react. The man is laughing, though, and after Kakyoin follows Kujo and catches up, the three of them leave together, off in the direction of town. You hear a few murmurs around you, third-years wondering how in the world Kujo managed to get people like that to follow him around. He’s never been very interested in making friends, after all.

Kakyoin, at the very least, is relatively amicable as far as other people are concerned. You’re pretty sure that he notices your interest, too, but he doesn’t say a word about it either way. You pluck up the courage to ask him, at one point, why he hangs around Kujo so much, and he says, simply, that Kujo helped him before. Helped him with what, you want to ask, but you know that you’re likely pushing your luck as is.

The further the semester progresses, however, the more you realize that there’s something very wrong with Kakyoin, too. You’re walking down the stairs with your bag slung over your shoulder like always, humming a tune to yourself, when you see him fall right in front of you. He’s near the bottom, and manages to catch himself before he tumbles down too far, but his books are scattered everywhere and he’s gasping, trembling, trying to force himself to stand up like an old man who lost his wheelchair.

You take the stairs two at a time, weaving around other passing students, but stop in your tracks when you see that Kujo is just... there now. You don’t know when he appeared by Kakyoin’s side, or where he even was before then, but he’s there, an arm around his shoulders, helping him to his feet. Kujo looks up, meeting your gaze with a cold, steely death glare, and you hold your hands up, passing by the two of them as quickly as you can. You want to look back, but you’re not entirely sure if you’d survive, so you keep your gaze focused on nothing.

Neither of them show up to class that day.

From that point on, you notice it more and more - how Kakyoin’s legs shake when he stands up too quickly, how he instinctively covers his stomach with his arms or hands whenever anything gets too close, how he stumbles every now and then, often over nothing at all - and you spend a nice chunk of time after school in the library, scouring books for information as to what could be causing it. Something in the back of your mind says that it’s none of your business, that you’re prying into something that you really shouldn’t, but to be frank, you know that you’ve already long since passed that point.

Kujo rarely leaves Kakyoin’s side any more. Wherever one goes, the other follows, no matter the location or time of day - Kujo once gets up from his seat and walks out in the middle of a lecture, with the teacher and the rest of the class too stunned to do much of anything about it. A tiny, mousy first-year claims that she saw the two of them at the nearby park, late at night, lying on the grass and watching the stars, and she presents a blurry, barely visible Polaroid picture as evidence. Said picture gets passed around like a virus, returned to the girl eventually with crumpled corners and smudged fingerprints.

Most are content to observe, rubbernecking in small clusters every time the pair of them passes by attached at the hip, but there’s a vocal few that start to make themselves known the longer it goes on. They don’t like the new Kujo, the Kujo that no longer rises to the challenge of petty, entertaining fights, the Kujo that ignores almost everything save for his attachment to some random transfer student. It’s a disruption in the school’s pecking order, and coupled with the mystery of it all, it quickly turns into a raw, festering source of rage. Kujo doesn’t even seem to notice, which only adds fuel to the fire until the tensions are unbearable.

It takes until late April for everything to reach its breaking point. The day is quite frankly beautiful, and almost everyone is taking the opportunity to eat their lunch outside, surrounded by warm breeze and quiet chatter of birds. You’re sitting in the grass with your bento in your lap, shoving a clump of rice into your mouth, when you hear a loud, sharp holler of, hey, Kujo, from somewhere behind you. You place the box gently on the ground before you stand up, not wanting to spill any of your precious food, then turn around to see what’s going on.

Kujo’s leaning against one of the walls with his hands in his pockets, head canted towards another boy who’s standing across from him with a wide, irritating grin. You see Kakyoin, too, out of the corner of your eye - he’s behind one of the school windows, turned around and messing with the vending machine near the door.

The boy whose name you don’t know takes a few swaggering steps, his arms out to the side, laughs, and boasts to whoever’s watching that he could take Kujo in a fight, that Kujo’s so rusty at this point that anyone could. Kujo doesn’t so much as twitch in response. You hear a few snickers from around you, and the boy falters, stopping in his tracks and glaring at anyone in his line of sight. His grin turns sour almost immediately, until it’s more like a slash across his face than anything else, and he lets out a snarl, his hands diving into his pockets.

And they come back out with knives. It takes you a second to recognize them - rubber knives stolen from the self-defense lessons in gym. You’re in awe at how desperate this guy seems to be for any kind of attention, wondering how in the world the teacher is going to react to this happening. But Kujo suddenly freezes, his loosely crossed arms turning into a vice grip across his chest in a matter of seconds, and the other boy lets out a sneering laugh. Then he tosses the knives in two big handfuls, scattering them all over the grass and pavement, making some other ridiculous claim about how strong he is.

Kujo...blanks. He just stands there, his eyes empty, mouth slightly open. You can hear his breath coming out shallow, jagged. It’s honestly kind of disturbing. The other boy hesitates after a few seconds of creepy silence, laughing awkwardly and trying to pass it off as a joke, but it doesn’t even look like Kujo hears him.

The door leading inside creaks open, the noise deafening in the ambient silence, and Kakyoin steps out, two bags of Calbee chips in his hand. He approaches Kujo, carefully, resting a hand on his shoulder, but the latter flinches away violently, stumbling back towards the open door and slamming it shut behind him.

Kakyoin follows Kujo through the windows with his gaze until he leaves his line of sight, still frozen in mid-gesture. It looks as though he’s considering whether or not he should chase after him, and after a second or so he sighs, collapsing down in the grass, his expression acting as a shield against anyone with questions on the tip of their tongue.

No one speaks. It doesn’t seem like anyone can.

The boy who threw the knives is suspended for two weeks. Kujo doesn’t come back to school for even longer. Kakyoin stays as diligent as ever, attending all of his classes and finishing every assignment, but he’s so quiet that it’s easy to forget that he’s even there, especially without Kujo nearby. The blonde woman you saw a few months ago shows up at the school office again, and later in the day your class is treated to a short, impromptu lecture on PTSD and irresponsible use of school materials, which raises more than a few questions as far as you’re concerned.

But then again, your experience with Kujo for the past few months has been nothing but questions. It only makes sense to you, you suppose, that more would pop up.

The next time you see Kujo, it isn’t even at school. You’re walking back from the grocery store as the sun is setting, a bag slung over your arm, when you spot him on a bench near the sidewalk. He’s got a cigarette in his mouth, wearing some faded t-shirt and jeans (although he does still have the school cap on), sitting slumped against the back of the bench. You can’t see him very well because of how quickly it’s getting dark, but you know for a fact that it’s him. You veer off the sidewalk, treading lightly through the grass in order to avoid falling into his line of sight.

There are footsteps coming from somewhere to your left, and you duck out of the way just in time to see Kakyoin drawing near from somewhere down the street, placing himself down on the bench next to Kujo. Neither of them says a word, and you try your hardest to keep your breath quiet amid the silence, settling behind a row of nearby bushes. The second you get comfortable, though, you hear the light rustle of clothes, and you peer over the bush to see that they’ve both gotten to their feet, starting to make their way down the street to somewhere else.

You tail the two of them from a distance, your grocery bag held securely in both arms to avoid any unnecessary noise. They stop at the shore near one of the larger ponds, sitting down side-by-side in the sand. You set your bag down on the ground and crouch next to a tree, just close enough to see decently well what’s going on.

They’re both quiet as Kujo runs his hands through the sand, picking up tiny piles and letting them fall through his fingers, his back hunched and his shoulders stiff. Kakyoin slings an arm around Kujo’s shoulder, rubbing it slowly up and down, a careful, soothing touch. Jotaro, he murmurs, his voice soft, over and over. Jotaro.

Kujo says something so quiet that you can’t make it out, but Kakyoin nods, leaning over and resting his head in the crook of his neck. A second passes, and then Kujo lets go of the sand, placing his hand on Kakyoin’s leg, clinging tight enough that his knuckles go white.

You know, now more than ever, that you’re seeing something you probably shouldn’t. You decide to go home.

The next day, Kujo’s at school again. You’re not entirely sure why, but you don’t find yourself surprised - what you saw the evening before told you far more than you ever thought it would. He’s behaving about how you expected, quiet and calculating and sticking closely to the places he feels safe, but, you realize, that seems to have become the new normal. Some of the girls who once clung to him seem disappointed by it, but you’re certainly not one of them. Your attachment never matched theirs, true, but the watchful eye you've kept has to count for something.

You don’t know what happened when he was gone, even though you know that something did. You also have to admit, you still don’t know Kujo at all despite how closely you’ve been watching him and how much you’ve seen. You've never even talked to the guy. For all intents and purposes, Kujo's a stranger to you, even if he's one you know more about than most other people.

But, you realize, you do know one thing. You know that life will continue on, despite everything else. And as life continues, so do the people living in it, finding ways to keep going whether they come easily or have to be scavenged for. You don’t know Kujo, but you do know his resilience. You know that human resilience.

He's the new Kujo that you've grown accustomed to, but at the same time, you see flashes of that old hot-blooded lout every so often. He still curses at authority figures every once in a while, tosses things carelessly, puts his feet up on desks and tables. He's changed for the better in some ways, too - you've never heard him laugh until you overhear a conversation with Kakyoin drifting down from the rooftop. He's so attached to him, and you think you know why, but it still comes as a remarkably pleasant surprise to see the two mystery boys enjoying each other's company.

Time passes, the seasons change, and with them, the intrigue begins to fade. It's gradual, true, but it finally comes crashing down on you when you wake up one day to find that no one says a word about him. And with that realization, you finally find yourself able to lay your questions to rest.