[Hagiwara/Matsuda] That's Just How We Are, Childhood Friends from Beika

[Unconditional comments are open ☆ Free story, comments and favorites welcome ☆ Set in the Hanzawa universe, logic not guaranteed ▷ Packed with dry humor] Also known as The Boy Who Cried Wolf 2.0

: How to Make Everyone, Marinated in the Flirty Atmosphere Between Me and My Childhood Friend, Realize That This Time We're Actually Married

: Even after we spread copies of our marriage certificate across the entire world, everyone still firmly believes we're just good friends.

Synopsis:

To save the married population, which is on the brink of collapse due to an excessively high rate of murders driven by romantic jealousy, a new law appears out of nowhere in Beika:

[Alphas and omegas over the age of 30 who are unmarried and have a pheromone compatibility of at least 80 percent will be forcibly paired up.]

Better to enter a marriage of convenience with little Jinpei/Hagi and dodge the forced match!

After dodging the explosion fate had in store for them, the 29-year-old officers Hagiwara and Matsuda decided to get married on the spot, with the plan to [pretend to be married for a year, then get divorced].

To save the world (?), Hagiwara Kenji tries to get ahead of things and announce their marriage himself, but

A black-haired classmate who suddenly turns into a child, a strange but familiar-looking bank employee interrupting their conversation, a cat with narrowed eyes that speaks…

Wait, why haven't they told everyone today either that he's married to his childhood friend Matsuda?

[Seeing the two of them sharing a room aboard a cruise ship]

Conan: Officer Hagiwara and Officer Matsuda grew up together as childhood friends. Sleeping in the same room isn't something they need to be that careful about!

[Witnessing Hagi and Matsu kissing at Cafe Poirot]

Amuro Tooru: You'd go this far and pretend to be a couple just to get a second free meal… That's so you two.

[Seeing their marriage certificate sitting out in plain sight on the table]

Little Hiro: Have fake certificates gotten this realistic nowadays?

…

Hagi: (Even if we haven't gotten there yet) Why can't anyone believe that little Jinpei and I could be more than just the very, very, very best of friends!

Undeterred by each setback, Hagiwara Kenji starts reading A Hundred Things AO Couples Must Do to Show Their Love:

1. Wear matching outfits.

Skip. They share a wardrobe, and it even has cheerleading outfits printed with each other's names.

2. Visit an amusement park.

Skip. They've been going since elementary school, and even Sato knows they have annual passes to amusement parks all over Japan.

3. Meet the parents.

Little Jinpei and I met each other's parents when we were seven. Skip!

…

Skipping all the way to the end, Hagiwara Kenji thinks: It must be because I haven't recovered from my post-explosion symptoms and still can't sense pheromones properly. That's why nobody believes we're married. It definitely isn't because little Jinpei and I were already so flirtatious as friends that everyone got desensitized to it!

But even after he recovers from his lingering symptoms, defeats the culprit lurking behind everyday life, and even sees the new marriage law repealed, their progress toward announcing their marriage remains at zero.

After finally making it through a long 29th year, Hagiwara Kenji decides to call off the divorce on the day they were supposed to split up.

Notes:

1. Grape-scented alpha Hagiwara Kenji x blueberry-scented omega Matsuda Jinpei. Monogamous, no switching, a classic AO pairing.

2. The blurb is in third person, while the story is written in first person.

3. As the blurb's style suggests, this is a nonsensical, offbeat ABO comedy. You can think of it as half Hanzawa, with plenty of dry humor throughout.

4. There will inevitably be some mystery-solving, but the author's intelligence is limited, so don't overthink the logic. This is a story written with total abandon, and pretty much everyone who can be saved will be saved.

5. Once a new chapter gets ten valid reviews, another chapter will be updated the next day.

6. Written without a backlog, so even the author can't predict where the story will go.

7. This is a free story! I could use some encouragement!

No need to tell me if you drop it.

8. The timeline diverges significantly! Major events change both before and after Year Zero.

[Ratings for free stories and paid stories are separate! Giving a free story a low rating won't let you give paid stories more high ratings.]

Thanks to An Chun for permission to use the cover. The artist made several versions, but none looked right, so I left off the title.

Also, check out the upcoming HagiMatsu ABO story next door (full manuscript in progress):

Why Is Officer Matsuda Like This?: He says he and Hagiwara are going through the seven-year itch.

On Sambuca's first day working in Beika, he successfully becomes a suspect in a case, and falls in love at first sight with Detective Matsuda, who's examining the target's corpse.

Bad news: The man is married and even has a six-year-old biological child.

Good news: Detective Matsuda's alpha partner is dead, so Sambuca can pursue him with a clear conscience.

Even worse news: Officer Matsuda can't forget his childhood friend and late husband, who died young, and is wholly focused on avenging him.

Even better news: The clues point to the organization Sambuca works for. Now they have a shared topic to talk about for a long time!

…

News that might be good or bad: Sambuca discovers that he is actually Hagiwara Kenji, Matsuda Jinpei's childhood friend and late husband who died seven years ago.

And Hagiwara Kenji himself has no idea he's the deceased husband.

Theme: Welcome to Beika!