"Een gland?" slurred Masamune.

The kid with the glasses, wearing a shit-eating smirk, pointed insistently at the words he'd written on the chalkboard. "Wrong," he chastised in English. He snorted. "What, you can't even read this? Say it already."

"Shut the fuck up," said Yokozawa. He turned back to Masamune, putting his hand on his shoulder to encourage him. "Don't worry about it. Just say 'England', like that."

"…In-glund…?"

"Say it slowly."

"Your English sucks, Takano," said the kid, continuing to goad. "You're going to fail so hard. And Professor Big Tits will be so disappointed in you."

"Don't call her that," said Yokozawa sternly. "Besides, that's rich coming from the world's biggest class clown. You're a disappointment as a college student!"

The kid sighed dramatically. "Oh, my heart. My heart, Yakazawa."

"Don't call me that either! Shut up with the names!"

"Both of you should shut up," mumbled Masamune, getting up and slinging his bag over his shoulder. "This is stupid. I'm out."

Yokozawa grabbed Masamune's hand and tried to get him to sit down, but Masamune pulled away. He left. He resolved in his head to spend the rest of Study Hour in the library.

Yokozawa, of course, followed. He fell into step not two minutes after Masamune started walking. "That was embarrassing."

"Oh, was it?" Masamune rolled his eyes.

"Can't you act like you give a damn?" Yokozawa shoved him on the shoulder. "If you would just try to learn the actual fucking words, then kids like that wouldn't-"

"I am trying," said Masamune. "That's a stupid word. It's stupid how they say it in English."

He stopped walking to re-adjust his bag's shoulder strap, muttering about fucking stupid backpacks and how he liked the one he'd had in high school better. Looking over his shoulder at the classroom, he realized that the kid must have left. Reaching into his pocket, Yokozawa lit a cigarette but refused one to Masamune, and he smoked it as they loitered on the walkway.

Masamunen frowned. That kid had been so fucking annoying. Earlier, he'd been going on about his pretentious adventures in England…. about his friend… the one with the roommate from Japan…. the friend from Japan with a fiancé…. Just thinking about it, he felt like he was dying. It had to be his….. Ritsu Oda…. His….

"So, do you think that kid's telling the truth? About that kid from England?"

He'd found a coin on the sidewalk and instead of picking it up he was marveling at it; how exactly did it end up on the sidewalk, since he could have sworn he'd lost that exact same coin three years ago. How did he manage to find it again?

"I know what you're thinking about," muttered Yokozawa. "I'm killing this train of thought right now, so forget about it."

"I'm didn't ask for your approval," Masamune snorted. "Stop looking at me like that. I know I'm hopeless. If there's any chance that it could be my Ritsu, I-"

"Woah, what are you talking about?"

"Well, if there's a chance, I'm going to-"

"No," Yokozawa snapped, pointing the cigarette butt in Masamune's face. "What the hell do you have jammed up your ass? You're insane, Masamune. Don't you care how much he hurt you? You don't care at all, do you? You're like that guy we read about in Japanese Lit-" Yokozawa hesitated, his sentence stuttering out. Then, he laughed and threw his hands up. "Oh no, I forgot. You weren't there for that lesson, because you were too busy fucking everything with legs! Getting drunk! Getting alcohol poisoning! Crying in your room! Not bathing! I had to drag you into the bathtub!"

"I never asked you to-"

"This is all because of your stupid Ritsu Oda!" Yokozawa yelled. He turned around as a couple of other kids passed them by, and when he turned back around to hiss at Masamune, his eyes were shining.

Masamune looked away. They stood there, brooding, until Yokozawa snubbed out his cigarette. He started to walk away slowly, and Masamune looked over his shoulder at the classroom once more before turning away and following him.

Carefully, Yokozawa smoked another cigarette. He felt his hands shaking. They walked in silence. They were shoulder to shoulder. The sky was grey and smothered with thick clouds like rolls of dead fat, blocking out the sun.

They'd made it to the library, finally, and Masamune mounted the steps. Yokozawa stayed at the base of the steps, half turned away, glaring at the ground.

"So… your big plan. Masamune."

"…. I don't know. I'm never going to be able to apologize, Yokozawa. I might as well just give up. You know?"

"I see." Yokozawa sighed. "Let me help you. I can't let you do this to yourself again. I can help you move on."

Masamune shook his head, but Yokozawa ran up the steps, grabbing his arm. Masamune tugged away. "Let go."

"No, you let go. That's the only thing you can do, to get over this obsession."

Yokozawa, stepping back, splayed his hands as if he was pleading, then turned around and walked away.

"Say 'England', like that."

"England."

"That's it!" Oda giggled. "Good job, Saga!"

Masamune stared. He could drown himself in that smile and die happily.

It was a dream, but when his imaginary Oda leaned up and hugged him in congratulations, Masamune felt dizzy. He smelled like perfume. Masamune's hands ghosted over his arms as he sat back down cross-legged, half-buried in the grass. Masamune turned to watch the clouds move across the sky.

"So this is England…"

His mind had supplied something like the boonies, more or less. This place, though, had color in it. Huge color. Big color. Splashes. It made him shaky because it was too surreal; he himself felt saturated. And the fields were endless. They stretched to the very edge of the world and they were marked with trails for giants, wide and cream-colored. The sky hung over the ground heavily as if to engulf it in a storm, and it glowed white. It made everything else look black as hell. Masamune breathed in the air; it tasted like sugar.

This was one realistic dream.

Oda was beautiful, too, but he'd always been beautiful. So, so beautiful. Masamune sat down next to his obsession.

"I miss you a lot," said Oda. "I wish you were here with me. It's really boring without you here. We could have taken walks on the paths and gone cherry blossom viewing around that time of the year. Emerald's really a beautiful place."

"Huh?" Masamune looked at him in confusion.

"I said, England's really a beautiful place." Oda looked away, squirming sheepishly in the grass and smiling at the fields. "Do you… like it?"

Saga, do you… like me?

Heh…

Quickly Masamune said, "I love it." His heart thumped hard in his chest. Maybe it was because of the type of dream he was having, but he felt his chest cracking open. He tried to put his arm around Oda, but he couldn't. This wasn't real. He'd never be able to make it stop. Every feelingshattered him.

Something's not right.

We're not in Kansas anymore.

"I always wanted to take you to somewhere like this," he confessed, scooting away and folding his arms. "Out where we could be alone. I would take you on a date here." He frowned. "I don't see a school anywhere. Aren't you studying here?" said Masamune. "Where is it, Ritsu?"

Masamune turned to him. Oda looked terrible. He had deep black bags under his eyes, his hair was greasy, and his skin was blotchy. Masamune touched his own face. He remembered the booze and the sleeping and the insomnia and this wasn't what Oda should know, ever, never in his entire little innocent life, this was the thing that wasn't right.

"Oh, God, Ritsu. What are you doing to yourself?" He clenched his hands into fists, upsetting the dirt, tearing up the grass. This dream was becoming a nightmare.

"I dropped out."

"Why?"

"I left so I could go find you. I told myself I would find you."

"… you're an idiot." He put a hand to his forehead. "Are you serious? Jesus, Ritsu, what's wrong with you?"

"I don't care," Oda said. "As long as it's you."

Masamune groaned. "If I had known you would've ended up doing this to yourself, I would have forgotten about you a while ago."

Oda frowned. He reached his hand out. At first, Masamune thought he was trying to give him a hug, but when his hand went through Masamune's body and his fingers twitched around his heart, Masamune cried out. He felt like… his heart was breaking. Oda had a hideously tortured expression on his face. Masamune wanted to kiss it away, but God. The two of them weren't even actually there.

"It feels like that," Oda said.

"I know how it feels," Masamune muttered. "I'll find you."

"But you can't." Oda stood up.

"I'll find you."

Oda turned around. He started to walk across the fields, and he was getting smaller and smaller faster. "But you can't."

"Come back here! Where are you going? I'll find you!" yelled Masamune at Oda's disappearing dot of a figure. "Just you wait!"

"But you can't!"

Masamune tried to stand up, but he couldn't. In this dream, gravity was against him. Instead, he took a huge breath and he said:

"I'll find you!"

Takano woke up. He felt a new sense of purpose beyond wasting time. He needed to find Ritsu. He wasn't giving up. Not this time, no matter how many things could go wrong. He got out of bed quickly, tearing open his drawers and throwing on his clothes. He tracked the kid down who had been in his Study Hour yesterday.

"So," he said. "I have some questions about England."

"Yeah? What questions?"

"Some questions about a boy named Ritsu Oda."