#i will single-handendly fill the tag up because I have so many thoughts about them

[nikeiyomiurioverthinker]

How do I explain to people that YES I ship Nikei and Syobai for the ahah get naked comment but ALSO because they are thematic foils?

Syobai has a lot of power: that much cannot be stated enough. He has enough influence to force *Tsurugi* of all people to bend his own morals in order to find an excuse to employ him. He is overqualified for basically any job you'd ever want to put him to use for, and his abilities are clearly valued in-universe, considering he ended up working for three different people with three different agendas at the same time. Syobai is someone whose existence cannot be easily cast aside or left behind, and the interesting thing is that Syobai *hates* it. He doesn't ever express it out loud to anyone directly, but both his FTEs and the first omake story show us that he clearly hates having to live like this, he finds no comfort in what he was able to accomplish.

Nikei is the complete opposite of that: he wishes to be something, *anything* at all, to have enough of a social standing to matter in the grander scheme of things. His struggle is born out of his inability to make his deepest desire come true- Linuj himself has stated that, while everyone else in Void has the abilities to actually be considered an Ultimate, Nikei specifically does not. He isn't special, and the few times he manages to gain something that makes his life matter (in his own eyes), it is taken away from him. Nikei is never allowed to succeed in life, he is bound to always fail.

So we have a man who craves for success in any form in order to feel like he matters, and another one who hates everything he is despite his success. They both have something that the other one wants, and are unaware of said thing being the exact reason behind the other man's struggles.

Nikei's desire is obvious: Syobai is successful, and that's all Nikei wants. He managed to do what Nikei wishes he could, and he can't help but deeply respect the man for it.

Syobai is less obviously stated, but it's still pretty clear that he wishes he had a normal life, or at least had been given the choice to live one. Nikei and Syobai both have struggled in their childhood (although we do not know yet what Nikei's backstory is, but I've heard of a theory going around about him being trafficked- which if it comes out to be true, would make the parallels between the two even more obvious, but that isn't necessary for me to make my point right now), but Syobai was never given the opportunity to go back to a normal life like Nikei was.

They also obviously have some sort of soft spot for one another, but that's for another post entirely

Anyway Syobai x Nikei supremacy