Disclaimer: Junjou Romantica is not mine.

All reviews welcome.


Misaki has heard of the concept of alternative universes, the idea that in the infinite continuum of space there are billions and billions of other worlds, each created by a decision made in one world — an exponential increase no one can imagine, never mind chart.

Sometimes Misaki thinks about this, about every decision he has ever made, and his mind gets dizzy. When it comes around to a certain time of year and Misaki can't stop the gloom that comes with it, he thinks about the night his parents didn't come home, and what would've happened if they had. He imagines the possibilities spiraling outward: his parents at his ninth birthday, his graduation, arguing with him over curfew. His brother graduating from Mitsuhashi and taking on the world, far richer than he ever managed here.

One year Misaki thinks of these things and wonders if in this alternative world he'd have met Usagi, and if they'd ever have in the elsewhere what they have here now. It causes an uncomfortable sensation in his stomach, because all he can see is Usagi pining away for his brother, clinging on to the thing that brings him both pain and happiness. He thinks of his parents, how proud they'd be at his brother's wedding; then he thinks of Usagi, of how he would sulk off in some corner, alone and lonely, quietly suffering. Misaki pictures himself with a wife and kids whose faces he can't see, and then he thinks that maybe even in this other world Usagi would have to tutor him, like it was their destiny to become like this, and then all he can see is his parents' faces hidden by shadow as they find out the exact nature of the relationship between their youngest son and his tutor —

And he decides, curling up next to Usagi and closing his eyes, that the other possibilities aren't worth thinking about, because this is the only universe he'll ever know, anyway.

And it's not bad, really, because this one holds his brother and The*Kan and a happy Usagi who always stays by his side.