WARNINGS: Major game spoilers, mild cussing, and may or may not contain character death(s). Please read at your own risk. Thank you.

A/N: There was a moment in time in which I was obsessed with The World Ends with You…. Please do not read this if you have not played this game/do not wish to receive spoilers for it.

It was understood that Neku had his headphones on—always—because he hated people. It was the easiest way to avoid dealing with them. Once he put them on, he would be transported to a little world all to himself. No one would hear what he was hearing (like hell he was going to buy those cheap, crappy headphones that didn't even block sound well enough) and, in turn, he would not have to hear what they heard. It had always been a win-win situation for him.

All he needed to do was crank up the music and….

As usual, Shibuya was crammed with people, and too many of them at that. They were rushing and running in that absurd way that people were prone to run in when they were trying to appear as if they were still "walking"…. They acted as if people didn't know they were in a rush to get somewhere. It was, in Neku's opinion, stupid. Why couldn't they just freaking run in the first place? Did they think that weird loping hop-skip thing made them look any more civilized? He scoffed.

But… Neku couldn't say that he didn't enjoy studying them. Watching them as an outsider, and not as a participant, was different. The feeling was akin to sitting atop a high building and watching everyone walk around on the streets below.

However, now, even if he wanted to be a participant, he couldn't. He couldn't turn to the person next to him, start speaking, and expect to get an answer—that is, he couldn't expect to get an answer unless they were a Player or a Reaper.

There was something… both pleasing and disappointing in that fact to Neku. This was what he had always wanted: for people to leave him alone. And yet, there was that niggling feeling in the back of his head (or perhaps in a dark corner of his heart) that this really wasn't quite his greatest wish. If it had been anything to teach him such a thing, it would be the Game he was currently playing.

Life never seemed so far away, never so frustratingly intangible, never so teasingly close until he died. Never did he think he would miss that thick thump-thump, thump-thump of his heart until it ceased being his unreliable and ever fluctuating metronome. Unconsciously, he raised a hand—cold but still feeling—to his chest and found what he expected to be there: nothing.

He was sure that, if he still had his heart, it would have skipped at the mere feeling of reconfirming that fact that, yes, he was indeed dead. But now, he wanted to be alive again, not merely for the sake of living, but also for Shiki. Some part of him still couldn't believe that they took Shiki as his second entry fee. Yet he wasn't sure which was more surprising: the fact that Shiki was the most important thing to him or the fact that he was back in the Game yet again.

Neku lowered his head into his high collar in an attempt to escape his conflicting thoughts and turned up his music. His inner feelings were shadowed—more like blasted out—by the sudden exponential increase in decibels.

No longer did the incomprehensible din of Life bother him. The only thing he was aware of now was the deafening amalgam of words and instruments. Peace—uneasy and unnatural at best—overtook him.

Suddenly, there was a tap on his shoulder, and he jumped a bit, having momentarily forgotten that he was not alone. It was not as if he wanted to even remember someone else was with him…. He spun around quickly, irritation written all over his face.

Joshua—just barely breaching his personal bubble, but not enough to make him back away—was standing there with a haughty smirk, one hand tucked into his back pocket, and the other brushing his bangs out of his eyes. To Neku, he just emanated an "I'm a bastard, what are you going to do about it?" aura at all times.

"What?" Neku snapped, unable to hear himself except for the abnormal, muted whisper he caught between the electric guitars and drums. He might have been speaking louder than normal, but he couldn't care less. Nobody besides Joshua could hear him, and he didn't give a damn as to whether or not he was screaming at Joshua or not.

His eyes caught the motion of his partner's lips moving, but he didn't hear anything. He furrowed his brows further and crossed his arms agitatedly.

After a few seconds of glaring at each other (though to be fair, it was only really Neku doing the glaring, while Joshua merely looked at him with a hope-deprived, exasperated expression), the other boy made an over-exaggerated motion of sighing, rolling his eyes, and shifting his weight to one leg. When he looked back at Neku, his head was tilted slightly down and he was smiling—no, smirking—condescendingly. He used his free hand to tap at his ear, beckoning Neku to do the same with a slight jerk of his chin.

Automatically, the redhead raised a hand to his ear, only to be impeded by, not surprisingly, his headphones. As if he was trying to teach an infant something, Joshua nodded slowly (Damn that freakin' smile of his….) and made the motion of grasping some imaginary headphones from his ears and pulling them down to his neck.

Finally realizing what Joshua was trying to do, Neku growled and ripped the phones from his ears. He didn't react well to being mocked.

"What is it?" he asked brusquely, unable to stop a growl from leaking out toward the end of his rude question.

Joshua chuckled and shrugged "innocently," seemingly unaffected by his partner's show of aggression. "Oh, Neku, you'll go deaf if you keep listening to your music at such a high volume," he said in a matter-of-factly way. With a hand, he gestured toward the headphones now around Neku's neck, which were still blasting out a cacophony of noises. The speakers were clearly vibrating from the magnitude of the music.

He stopped me just to tell me that? Neku thought to himself, ill-pleased. "What's it to you?" he rebutted defensively. His lips pressed together firmly and his jaw clenched tightly.

"Why, how could I ever live with the fact that my dear partner went deaf because I didn't warn him of it beforehand?" Joshua asked rhetorically with a clearly fake wide-eyed expression. In an instant, his features had reverted back to his usual holier-than-thou face.

Neku scowled darkly and began putting on his headphones again. "Screw you, Joshua. I'll listen to my music as loudly as I want."

"Hmmm," Joshua hummed thoughtfully with a hand on his chin and his head cocked to one side. "But then you'll miss out on all the things around you…."

"What?" He paused hesitantly in his actions.

Joshua chuckled. He swept an arm out at the conglomeration of people walking around them. Those people had no idea that the two boys were there at all. "Them. You'll miss out on all the things that they talk and think about. You'll miss out on all the things that happen while you're listening to your music on repeat." He stopped and looked knowingly at Neku. A corner of his mouth tilted up almost imperceptibly.

Neku started. How did he know…!

"Sometimes," the silver-haired boy continued, ignoring Neku's look of shock, "you should stop and listen to them. You'll regret it later on, when you can't hear anymore. You'll miss it." He chuckled softly with his mouth closed, as he was prone to do.

Silence fell between them for a few moments awkwardly. Joshua looked away and seemed to be more interested in gazing at something far away thoughtfully.

Joshua's uncanny knowledge of his habits disturbed Neku greatly. It might have been just a shot in the dark, but… it unnerved him nonetheless.

They looked in different directions, but both were observing the kaleidoscope of people around them. Everyone was so different in similar ways. Neku shoved his hands into his pockets. He wondered how a world like this—so mercurial and volatile—could exist in such a small space. Why wasn't everyone fighting against each other's norms, ideas, and thoughts? How could they all be walking side-by-side-by-side… just like this?

Joshua spoke up suddenly. "Don't they hurt, sometimes?"

"Huh?" Neku asked, caught off-guard at the abrupt question. He thought the conversation had ended already. It wasn't uncommon for their "talks" to end without conclusion.

"Your ears," he explained in a tone not unlike one someone might use to speak with a confused child. He had one eyebrow raised in inquiry.

Instinctively, the redhead pulled at his earlobe and glared at the ground. Begrudgingly, he admitted to himself that the volume he listened to music was far too loud to be healthy. On more than one occasion, he found his ears in pain and a loud ringing noise piercing through them. Sometimes, he couldn't even hear people because his sense of hearing was muted, as if stuffed with cotton. At night, when he took them off, the hollow, one-tone note that ran through his thoughts prevented sleep sometimes. All these things he knew and acknowledged, but it wasn't as if he would admit it to Joshua, of all people.

Not waiting for an answer, Joshua laughed again. He pushed his bangs out of his eyes for what seemed to be the umpteenth time. "You should take care of yourself, Neku."

"I don't need you to worry about me!" Neku yelled indignantly at him. He fisted his hands.

The boy shrugged with a self-pleased smile. He started walking past Neku. "Suit yourself."

Neku waited until Joshua was a few paces in front of him before he placed the headphones over his ears again and flinched slightly. After the brief respite from the music, it was a shock to put the headphones back on. Perhaps it was a bit too loud….

Besides that, as he looked up from the floor and at the people walking around him without a care in the world (But, of course, that wasn't true, Neku knew. All he needed to do was scan them, and a million and one worries, thoughts, and cares would be revealed.), he felt a bit empty.

Perhaps, like a quietly festering wound, Neku hadn't realized the part of him that enjoyed observing and listening people just… be themselves, until Joshua pointed it out. Maybe it was like his heartbeat; after all, he didn't start missing it until it stopped.

He looked up fleetingly to make sure that Joshua wasn't looking and turned off his music player. "That prick," as Neku dubbed him, didn't need to know that he was actually going to listen to him. Heaven and Hell be damned before that….

Joshua was a good ways away from him by the time Neku began following.

Although he still couldn't hear very well with the sound-muffling headphones over his ears, he could still catch snippets and tidbits of conversations floating around here and there. It was comfortable to him. He was still in a semi-detached world but, in a way, he was still part of the world.

This could work. He'd just have to gradually get used to it. The stifled silence was odd to him, who was so used to having some sort of music accompany him at all times but… he could live with this.

Neku nearly laughed aloud at the irony of that thought.

Ahead of him, Joshua chuckled again….

Not that Neku heard him.