A soft sigh escaped Jeremy’s pale lips as he swung his slightly long brown hair out of his face, revealing his too bright, blue eyes. His appearance and features almost clashed with his outfit, a pair of bedraggled jeans and a loose hanging band t-shirt. He didn’t even know the band… He’d not bothered to look when he got out of bed that morning, just went out on his normal routine, to head to his normal spot; the place where he would sit for a few hours before going home to his overly normal routine.

The bumps of the road shook the cheap seats of the large, blue bus. It was just a normal city bus. It cost the average fifty cents for a ride to wherever you needed to go. He always took the bus and, for the most part, people had gotten used to his usual banter.

“You know, you really should get more into women, Jeremy. You need to put yourself out there! Just because you had a few failed relationships shouldn’t deter you from finding love! You just gotta search the right places.” Erik rambled on and on about how relationships were necessary to life and its ways. He had always been the type to think that women were the bane of every man’s existence.

William butted in. He always liked to argue, especially with the overly sexually driven Erik, “You do know that the human male does not need a relationship to keep him alive and going.”

“No,” Erik responded before William could complete his thought, “You’re right.” That got William’s hopes up for a second, but they were quickly dashed, “All that really matters is sex.” Erik grinned his mischievous grin and flipped his bright blond hair out of his flawless face.

William merely grimaced and sat back down from where he had stood up to argue, assuming, as he was ‘oft to, that the argument was pointless. He continued to draw small sketches of the landscapes they passed in his sketchbook. Of course, the discussion never ended there, as they had started it before and never really finished.

Shinji, sitting on the floor in the far corner of that almost empty bus, decided to chime in his two cents for once. He was never really the one to talk, seeing as he had been a mute until the age of twenty, one year before the age he festered at on that very day, “The way I see it, there’s no real point to sex or love. Love creates pain… why keep it? Sex causes problems, mainly children… so why keep it either? Really, they are both pointless, Erik.” He sighed and returned to moping in his corner, a frown of deep contemplation permanently plastered on his black hair framed face.

Mori looked up at them all with an odd look that only Jeremy really noticed… as always, “You know sex and love aren’t things to be hunted or things to hurt.” He downed Erik and Shinji with a sentence. As much as Jeremy had always hated him for it, Mori had a way with words and with calming others. The man had always known it too. One could tell as his smile became only slightly hidden by his red-streaked, blonde hair. He continued to play with the rose that sat delicately in his hand, as if no transgressions could ever, or would ever, touch his absolutely perfect form and mind.

No one dared respond to him as he looked out the window opposite the bus from Jeremy. Even Jeremy himself avoided pissing Mori off. The man was just not someone you wanted on your bad side. Muscle and charisma equaled a bad enemy. All this evened out to the next person speaking being Yuki. Yuki was ten at the time and overly hyper, overly active, and what Jeremy believed to be an untapped case of ADD. It wouldn’t have surprised him to hear the diagnosis, really. He had always thought the boy was weird, if not insane.

Yuki’s brown hair flung about his bright blue eyes as his innocent smile lit up his face, always a pre-requisite to his speaking, “Did you know that seventeen hundred diseases are carried on buses and public vehicles?” We all knew it was a lie to get attention as he shouted it, but most of us flinched and sat a little straighter nonetheless. It wasn’t as though sitting with better posture was going to protect us against disease. It is odd how the human mind thinks the way it does.

Erik just had to chime in, “That’s a load of bulls***. You couldn’t possibly have counted them all!”

Erik’s stupidity finally brought Jeremy back into the conversation. He usually let them talk while he observed and mediated, but, them being his friends and all, he just had to intervene sometimes, “So, how has your day been Kyle?” He chose to speak to Kyle only on the prospect that the man hadn’t spoken yet that day. He wasn’t much of a talker, but he hadn’t even said hello. Jeremy immediately knew everyone else had been thinking the same as him about the oddity of it all when they all suddenly stared at the black haired man at the very back of the bus who had just lifted his nose out of a very large book.

“My day has been just fine… I think I almost saw an angel actually.” There was a reason Kyle rarely spoke. His black hair and green eyes always reflected some sort of insanity. Then again, none of the group were what one may call the normal for society. Really, they were quite the opposite of what one may expect to see on the daily bus ride. Everyone stared at him, but no one made a sound for a long moment.

Yuki finally decided to be the one to say something, “That sounds amazing! I wish I could’ve seen it! Was it pretty? Did it have perfect blonde hair? Was it innocent looking? Was it short? Was it tall?” Kyle, ever the introvert, couldn’t really handle all of the questions, so Jeremy, though he wished he didn’t feel the need to, pulled Yuki away from the other man, putting himself in the boy’s place.

“That sounds like quite a breakthrough, Kyle.” Jeremy returned to his seat almost immediately, ignoring an old women sitting next to Kyle whom he hadn’t seen on the bus before and a policemen sitting in the seat beside where Shinji was lounging about on the floor. He was slightly surprised the cop hadn’t tried to get the older teen to move.

Erik looked in the general direction of the older woman, who was then watching Jeremy’s every move, staring at his mouth as he spoke and then talking to the policemen for a few moments, “Damn gossips. I f***ing hate a gossip.”

Mori chimed in, looking away from his few from his window seat, “Now Erik, there are older individuals on this bus and even younger ones who would not very much appreciate your foul mouth language. If I could wash your mouth out with soap, I would in a heartbeat.” He smirked and turned back towards the window, ignoring Erik charging across the bus to get him.

Jeremy burst through between them at the last possible moment, practically jumping from his seat to stop Erik from trying to beat up Mori and failing. The last time it had happened, Erik had been put into the hospital for multiple breaks and fractures, one of them including his skull, “Erik, back off!” He yelled at the other man pushed his back forcefully to his seat.

Erik didn’t fight as much as Jeremy expected. The man just sat down and moped for a few moments before ogling women walking by on the street, right outside his window. It was an odd sight, the group of people on the bus… an odd sight indeed.

Jeremy sighed as he plopped, tired, down into his seat. They were nearing his stop or else he might have rested. He actually laid his head back and would’ve dozed off had the policeman not tapped him roughly on the shoulder, more a hit than a tap, “Yes sir?” Jeremy replied immediately, looking to Mori and Erik for support just in case. They had their issues, but they were good backup in a fist fight or a runaway.

“Can I please ask you to stop talking to yourself? You are bothering a few of the other passengers.” Jeremy was greatly offended and huffed as he tugged the string to say he was ready to get off. The bus came to an easy stop and Jeremy glided to the front, the majority of his group of friends in tow, offended as well at what the cop had said.

“How dare you say I’m speaking to myself! Erik, William, Shinji, Mori, Kyle, and Yuki don’t like to be ignored! Just because we’re different doesn’t mean we aren’t real!” Jeremy stormed off the bus onto the busy sidewalks, the rest following him out as the bus pulled away, as normal as it could be. His day hadn’t changed all that much. It was just an extra hundred feet before his stop. He had just wanted to make the cop angry at him storming off like that.


The cop turned to the older woman, “What an odd man…”

The woman responded immediately, “Very much so… I wonder if he is schizophrenic… He would have to be to be having that much conversation and action with people that aren’t really there.” The surrounding people nodded confirmation.



Jeremy continued down the sidewalk to his apartment, for all he knew, his entire little group in tow. He was almost close to smiling as he heard William and Erik debating over sex behind him. It always made him feel better to hear his friends talking amongst themselves or to him… It was an odd feeling and one he did not enjoy, when the room or world itself was completely silent.