“Seriously?! You did it in one day?!” Gen gawked at his best friend as the golden-eyed boy puffed his chest out proudly, the two of them settling down for the day after a long series of unit tests.

“Of course I did.” Kenox smirked, sitting down on the mattress across from Gen’s with that usual note of pride in his eyes. “It was pretty simple in concept to do, so I did it.”

“Hey, hey, hey.” Gen held up a finger in the air, pouting at his best friend as he took a seat on his own mattress. “‘Concept’ and ‘execution’ are two totally different ball games! How did you manage to pull off revitalizing a broken economy in one day?”

Kenox shrugged, laying down with his hands laced behind his head, staring up at the blank ceiling of their dorm room.

“Honestly, it was a lot of luck.” He admitted, crossing one leg over the other as he watched the ceiling. “Being the servant in the room was a good set-up, and Callimud was easy enough to take out and impersonate. He was even forgiving afterwards and agreed to back the plan once I let him out of the closet.”

Kenox glanced over at Gen, his golden eyes meeting Gen’s reddish-brown ones across the room. “It was luck more than skill.” Kenox sighed, frowning as a troubled expression passed over his face. “I could’ve thought it through and approached from a different angle. Probably would’ve gotten a better score. The strangulation job was shoddy at best.”

“Are you kidding me?” Gen shook his head in astonishment, unable to even comprehend the criticism that was probably flowing through Kenox’s head right now.

In all the years that Gen had known Kenox, that had always been something that shocked him about the other boy. No matter what he did, or how well he did it, he could always find something that he’d done wrong. Something that could’ve been better. Something to beat himself up over since there wasn’t anybody around who could possibly beat him up.

“Stop insulting the things you’ve done.” Gen said firmly, leaning forward on the edge of his bed and shooting Kenox a broad grin. “Your run was amazing, Kenox! And all those things you could’ve done are just things you can improve on in the future. They aren’t mistakes, dude. They’re ways you’ve noticed you can get better!”

Kenox hummed a bit at the advice, his golden eyes doubtful.

Gen sighed, way too familiar with that stubborn, woe-is-me look than he’d like to be.

A sudden idea popped into his mind, though, and an even wider grin now replaced the one he’d had before.

“Oh, poor Kennie. Risen to the top yet again without a clear direction for where the next ceiling he needs to break is!” Gen cried dramatically, throwing an arm over his eyes and falling onto his mattress. “It’s so horrible! How can you possibly live with yourself when you aren’t soaring past human expectations?”

“Gen, cut it out.” Kenox huffed, rolling his eyes and rolling over to face the wall. “I’m not trying to soar past human expectations. I just wish I could be better than I was during the exam.”

“Ah, he strives for perfection yet cannot reach it!” Gen wailed next, continuing his tirade. “Truly tragic! We all know perfection is a totally normal goal for people to achieve effortlessly. Why can’t he reach it?”

“I’m not trying to be perfect!” Kenox snapped, still turned angrily towards the wall. “I just don’t think I did well enough! I could’ve had a better plan, I could’ve had a better speech, I could’ve-”

“You could’ve cured cancer and brought about eternal world peace and saved the ocean from pollution, if you’d only tried a little harder.” Gen cut him off, nodding sagely as he turned on his side and stared at his best friend’s tense back. “Yep, yep. Totally get it. You hold yourself to the standard of a miracle who needs to be the be-all, end-all solution for everything. Not a casual student taking a test.”

Kenox finally turned around to shoot Gen a glare, the murderous gold eyes flashing like fire pits from the deep-brown face Gen knew so well.

Now.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Gen suddenly widened his eyes as far as they could go, stretching his mouth into a massive ‘O’ of shock along with them, directing the overdramatic face of shock towards his glowering best friend.

Kenox blinked at the odd face, a bit of the fire leaving his eyes as he stared at Gen in confusion.

“What the hell is that face?” He asked flatly, eyeing the exaggerated ‘O’ of Gen’s mouth. “You look like a gaping fish.”

“Fish of Torment!” Gen cried, leaping to his feet suddenly and lunging at his best friend with the shocked expression.

“Gah!” The startled golden-eyed boy jerked instinctively away from the lunging boy, tumbling off the other side of his mattress and falling to the floor with a bang.

Gen laughed loudly at the sight, crawling onto Kenox’s bed and peering off its edge with a grin at his best friend.

The golden-eyed boy was groaning on the ground, crushed in the space between his bed and the wall, rubbing his head where it had slammed into the baseboard.

“You jerk!” Kenox snarled up at Gen’s grinning face, fury blazing over his face. “You and your…your stupid…”

Gen kept grinning down at Kenox as the boy fell into silence, then slowly shifted his face back into the shocked expression from before.

He tilted his head to the side, looking down at Kenox with the ridiculously stretched expression.

Kenox just stared up at it for a few seconds, neither boy moving.

Then the golden-eyed boy burst out laughing, wiping away tears as he turned away from Gen’s ridiculous face.

“Oh my god, stop looking at me with that thing!” He laughed, covering his face with his hands. “Y-You look so dumb!”

Gen dropped the expression immediately, laughing as he reached down and pulled Kenox out of the crack and back onto the bed.

“I look dumb?” Gen grinned, patting Kenox on the back as the boy gasped with laughter. “You should’ve seen yourself tumble off the bed! That’s what you get for keeping it a few feet away from the wall instead of pushed up against it.”

“Oh, shut it.” Kenox laughed, shoving at Gen’s arm as he steadily regained his breath, leaning back on the bed with a small smile.

Gen happily obliged, crossing his legs and sitting up straight on the bed, grinning at the still-slightly-breathless boy.

Eventually, Kenox sucked in one final breath, releasing it with a low sigh, and eying Gen with that same, small smile.

“Thanks for that.” He said simply, eyes much softer now than before. “I was getting kind of down on myself, huh?”

“You always do.” Gen rolled his eyes, punching Kenox in the arm. “Least in your own head, you do. Don’t focus on what you did wrong, Ken. Focus on what you want to try doing next in the future! Make yourself better, don’t keep yourself down.”

“Wise words from the idiot who caused a countrywide revolt and abandonment of the country you were supposed to revitalize.” Kenox snorted, shooting his own grin at Gen now. “Like, really? Four months you spent in that sim, and you just made things exponentially worse?”

“Hey, I wasn’t down with slavery and I thought people ought to know about it!” Gen huffed in protest, crossing his arms and looking away from the knowing smirk. “How was I supposed to know that it would lead to a mass exodus from Cannesia?”

Kenox shook his head, laughing softly to himself as the two of them sat on his bed.

“You’re something else, Gen. You really are.” Kenox sighed, smiling at the redhead fondly. “Well, at least you led the exodus successfully.”

“Yeah, I helped people pick which countries they wanted to immigrate to and started a smuggling line.” Gen sighed, wincing a little as he thought back to his own unit test.

It hadn’t ended all that well for him. He and his group had ended up getting arrested as traitors to the crown, encouraging abandonment of the country and responsible for driving it into devastation. He could still hear the guillotine being sharpened as he was led up to it, he and the other four founders of the smuggling ring all sentenced to death.

The simulation had cut off before his head had actually been placed on the chopping block, of course (had to prevent trauma and all that), but he got the point that he’d failed.

…Oh well! He’d tried his best. And he’d saved the country from that awful slavery plan, so that was a win in his book.

For some of the other students at this school, however, that would’ve been considered an inconsolable failure. The school was chock-full of people like Kenox, all striving for the top with every ounce of their beings, all so incredibly impressive without even realizing it. Some of them worked their tails off for it, and others just let things come easily to them, only trying every now and then.

In Gen’s mind, none of them really held a candle to Kenox, though. His best friend had a combination of natural talent and incessant hard work that was hard to rival. He was always striving to achieve the best performances possible, always pushing his skills to the limits in order to reach them, and never taking even a moment to back down.

Really, out of every single student in this school, there was only one that Gen thought was even potentially close to Kenox in terms of performance or drive. Speaking of that student…

“What do you think Hidari would’ve done?” Gen suddenly asked, surprising even himself with the question as he turned to look at Kenox. “I mean, I’m pretty sure Migi wouldn’t have cared a bit about the people being sold off around her. Actually, she probably would’ve been all for anything those advisors had to say if it meant she’d get to join a war or something. But what would Bunny Boy have done?”