So, I just finished watching "Summer Wars," and let me tell you, if Kazuma was a little older, I would be all over him. But, gah, first I thought he was a girl and shrugged it off, thinking that Kenji better fall for him. Then I found out he was a guy, whose voice sounded like it hadn't hit puberty, but then I realized he's in middle school, and I nearly fell out of my chair. Damn, I feel like I'm getting old, and I'm still in high school! This is not cool! I'm gonna feel ancient in college!
Kazuma looked up at Kenji as he stood in the doorway of his closet, staring down at the younger teen in confusion. The air was sweltering, to the point Kazuma thought he may die of heatstroke inside the small room, but it would be worth it. He couldn't stand his family most of the time, and when he could, it was only because he was starving to death in the closet and had to eat or face death as a consequence.
And he even had to debate coming out at those times.
Kenji just sighed, a lopsided smile coming onto his face as he caught sight of the laptop on a small, unfolding table in front of the tan teen, "Hand me some paper towels?"
The other glanced around, spotted said item behind his laptop, and threw it to the awkward college Junior behind him. Then he silently closed the door and left Kazuma to the virtual life.
It had been three years since the first summer they had met. Kenji began attending the same college as Natsuki, since they are dating and everything. She mostly just drags him around to places and tells him to carry her things.
As for Kazuma, his little sister was born, and was now three years old, and he was a Senior in High School. Although, since they had met, Kazuma would admit that he had just become more distant from the family, despite the events that had taken place that summer.
There were no longer any AI hackers, or falling satellites, or virtual gambling over the fate of millions of lives. It was boring in a way, but was it really worth it, to ask to relive that all over again.
Honestly, he would.
His little sister had been born, Natsu, her parents had named her after the summer. And soon, their lives revolved around her, they would come running at her every cry, forget everything for her, drop anything to see her. He didn't want to seem selfish, or petty, or needy in any way, but he felt abandoned.
That was it, plain and simple. It was like they replaced him with her, like they didn't care what he did anymore. At first, he didn't find it that bad, a little annoying that he would be woken up every night to the sounds of a crying baby every couple of hours, but otherwise, his mother stopped nagging at him to get off the computer.
So he took advantage of it, and soon was on his laptop almost all the time, sure, he began losing a little sleep because he was taking advantage of their distraction, but he had figured it would come to an end at some point.
It didn't.
A year later, and they were still the same. He was more relaxed with his time on the computer, spending less time than before on it, but still most of his time. At least he slept.
There had been a celebration for his acceptance to high school, but after that, life had returned to normal. Normal being they, in a way, ignoring his existence. Surely, no ton purpose, he knew they loved him, but his sister was absorbing all their time like a dry sponge.
Two years later, and he learned to deal with it, in a way. He figured getting the attention himself would be the only way to have it, earn it, as it obviously wasn't something that was given away so easily.
It was one fight, the guy had been bugging him sense elementary school, he was a bully, no one really liked him anyways, people had been cheering him. But, Master would have been ashamed. His parents sure were, too ashamed to tell the rest of the family, that's for sure.
They grounded him, after they yelled and lectured him, of course. And then they ran off because the baby had begun crying again.
In the end, it had left him with such a bad taste in his mouth, he figured it just wasn't worth it. Hurting people had never been something he liked, despite his liking to fight. He liked the competition, he liked to win, not to hurt.
That's probably why he preferred to fight on OZ, you didn't really cause anyone harm, and he could win against anyone.
Maybe that's why he got bored of it, though. It had become so easy to win, too easy. No one could beat him, the last person who had, that was the AI hacker. What was the name? Love Machine? What a strange name, why on earth did Wabisuke ever name it that?
Anyways, he had gotten born with fighting in OZ, then he got kind of bored with OZ in general. He was still on OZ, still was challenged all the time, but it wasn't the same. He had been looking for something else to do, something more interesting, anything that could occupy just a little bit of his time even.
It came in the mail, no, not e-mail, as shocking as that may be, it wasn't even a text message. It came in a physical, touchable, package. It took him an hour of searching for a letter opener before he remembered a knife from the kitchen could do the same job, and now that he looked back on it, everyone used OZ to send mail to each other, so they probably didn't even have a letter opener anymore.
Anyways, the package he had received, the magical gift he received that day to occupy his time, was a USB Drive. Or, rather, in the USB Drive, but that was besides the point. The rest of the package was filled with ripped up bits of newspaper, so he just threw it to the corner of his room and plugged the thing into his laptop, hoping it wasn't a virus or anything worse.
It was a message. From an anonymous sender, asking him to work for him, to just put a Word document with a reply on the USB Drive, and put it back in the mailbox. At first, Kazuma was going to say no. After all, he had no idea who this person was, and he didn't even know what this job was anyways. So it would only make sense that he turn it down.
He typed a "yes" into Word, placed it on the USB Drive, and, hesitatingly, walked up to his mailbox and dropped it in. He listened to the small object clang against the bottom of the metal box as it hit, then shook his head and ran back inside before he could change his mind.
Back in his room, he stared at the package in the corner of his room, thoughts of the job he agreed to swirling in his head. Would it be something dangerous? Was it a trick? Why him? Did other people get a similar package? Were only high school students asked?
Should he have said no?
Biting his lip in worry, he ran out of his room and out to the mailbox. Night had come, and the moon was beginning to rise. The air was chilly, and the mailbox was icy to the touch, but Kazuma threw the lid up and reached in. His fingers touched ever corner of the small box, but they never fell on a USB Drive.
It was gone.
He stepped back, wondering what would come from his reply.
Slowly, he walked back into his house, hearing his mom cooing over Natsu's cries in the kitchen. A small pit of bitterness swirled in his heart as he realized his mother didn't even notice him running right out of the house. What if he had decided to run away? Would they even notice he was gone?
Back in his room, he sat staring at his laptop's screensaver, a picture of their entire family at Grandma's funeral. His thoughts were spinning, wondering what he had just done, worrying of the outcome, meanwhile two parts of his mind battled. One said not to care, that if anything bad happened, his parents would grieve and blame themselves for ignoring him, and it would be a sort of revenge. The other part said that was wrong, that he shouldn't hope something bad happened to him to hurt someone else, and that his parents didn't mean to ignore him, they just had to take care of Natsu.
It was all quite confusing. As his eyes turned around the small room, they came to rest on the package again, and he got up to get it. Dropping onto his bed, he poured the paper out, wondering if he had maybe missed something. He didn't see anything, just a lot of shredded paper.
Suddenly, he recognized something. One of the pieces had the date of the newspaper.
August 1st, that was the day of Grandma's birthday, of her funeral. Blinking in surprise, he knew what was on the front of all newspapers that day. Slowly, in a painfully monotonous way, he pieced together all the pieces of the paper, until, finally, he had the entire thing.
It was the front page of a newspaper, as expected, and it debuted on it's front page, Kazuma, Kenji, and Natsuki, telling all about how they saved the world of OZ. Kazuma had a bright red circle drawn around him, in what probably was Sharpie or something.
Chills went up his spine, at the thought he had probably been watched, or maybe stalked for two years. He quickly brushed the paper off his bed, almost hoping he could brush the entire situation away in just the same way. But he had said yes, he had accepted the situation without even knowing what it was.
It was three am when he finally managed to fall asleep that night.
And while Kazuma thought back to the idea, he wondered why he had never received anything else from the mystery hirer. He almost hoped he would hear from him, or else he may think he was going crazy, and that the scraps of paper and the package that were sitting in the corner of his room, still, were just something he put there so he would be able to pretend that those events happened.
He shrugged the thoughts off, he was a Senior now, he had college to think about.
Everyone chatted peacefully over dinner that night, some gentle teasing of Kenji occurred, but all was in good humor. Kazuma sat quietly and ate, his laptop was under the table in his lap, his fingers itching to skip the meal all together and go back to his closet again so he could get back on the machine.
"Kazuma!" He jumped as his thoughts were broken, looking up in surprise, "Why don't you eat more! You're so skinny!"
He scowled at that and shrugged it off, he knew he was quite skinny for his age, that he was precariously balancing on the line between being just above average, and a little underweight. But he didn't really care.
Looking to the side, his gaze rested on Master, and he wondered, once again, if he would be ashamed. But he already knew the answer.
He would be.
"Kazuma! Don't daydream like that while people are talking to you! What are you going to do about college? We heard that your grades have been dropping since the beginning of high school, what's the matter? Are you being bullied?"
"A kid as skinny as he is? Everyday! I bet it! Probably is being thrown into dumpsters left and right!"
"Don't say that!"
"No, what he needs is a girl, if you know what I mean!"
"Don't put such lecherous thoughts in his head!"
Dropping his fork, he ran out of the room, hearing them yelling after him but not stopping as he jumped off the porch and ran into the bushes. Their voices were like bodiless needles to him, every high-pitched squeal of delight stabbing him after every drunken chuckle.
He just ran, he wasn't sure where he was going, he didn't particularly care, he just had to get away. The hill was steep, he was falling more than he was running, so when land came up to hit him, he tumbled, ungracefully, to his knees and rolled a couple feet from the force. Groaning, his gaze lifted to see the hot springs that had been built three summers ago, after it had been discovered by the satellite's crash.
He sighed to himself, regretting running off immediately with the thought of the humiliation he would feel from returning to face his family again. He moved to get up, his legs weak and shaking, from either the run or the fall he didn't know, but froze as he caught movement in the corner of his eye. He didn't turn to look directly at it, but he could see, just barely, that it was a person.
Someone was on their property? Maybe they had been secretly trying to use the hot spring?
His arm was suddenly grasped, and he nearly screamed as he was suddenly tugged to his feet and held up by two people in hooded robes. Eyes wide, he began tugging from their grips on his arms frantically, listening to his instinct to get the hell away from them as fast as he could.
"I hope you're ready to start work."
His gaze snapped to the sudden appearance of a figure in front of him, his breaths were coming out harsh and he was still too shocked to really process what was going on. Just that he got the feeling this was his new employer, and then a pit of dread formed in his stomach.
A sweet smelling napkin was shoved over his nose and mouth, and panic set in again as he attempted to fight. His movements became slow, and the world became blurry, and it would be around this time that a vague thought ran through his head about chloroform.
If he had to do it all over again, would he have still said yes?
Well, I didn't expect to write this, it comes as a surprise. Normally, I would continue, but I found a spot to end it. Besides that, I'm so used to writing yaoi now that I would probably end up making him gay for a character I made up, because everyone is either taken or old. And you guys probably don't want him to hook up with an OC in the end, so I'll just stop here.
Review please! Tell me if you like it, k? K! Thank you.
