Retracing the Shorelines

Disclaimer: I don't own SD boys, Inoue does. The events that follow are not included in the original plot but enjoy anyway.

Kaiser: Thanks for the review, dude. Anyway, you were asking what processor I used, right? It's just MS Word '03, if I'm not mistaken.

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Chapter II: Distinguishing Friend From Foe

What made up the Shohoku Dormitory was over and above what I first thought was comprehensible. For words to suffice, I'd probably need five hundred pages of descriptions, anecdotes, and dialogues that'd span a whole week with them, and what I'd agree to be an accurate memory. It would be a great factor to why I never quite wholly understood this prep school. While every other person's preconception about any institution with the same level of prestige suggests honor and nobility, mine didn't even come close. Meeting my dorm mates alone convinced me of it.

The welcome party on the night of my first arrival was meant to be delightful, and yet typical. The officers, whoever they were, seemed to have taken a great deal of pain to rent whatever necessities the event needed to seem like a wild one. They achieved the purpose to a certain extent, and what surprised me about it is the fact that it met a serious resistance from the Shohoku Dormitory's members' general appearance: Guys in their best signature suits and supposedly best behavior, their clean-shaven faces, their neatly combed hair. But that was all: It had to stop there because it didn't take long for them to live up to the party's wildness. In a minute, roughness and barbarism prevailed. There was something almost vulgar about the way they'd grab a hold of each other as a mode of greeting, something loud and at other times intolerable for me. They were, like any other guys their age, seemed to be suffering from an epidemic called adolescence. And much as I wish to draw a picture of them with more sympathy, at that time, that wasn't possible. What I was seeing before me then was nothing more than a three-ring circus replete with its outlandish cast.

"Cheeky freshmen." I heard a low growl behind me, there, not so far away from the buffet table where a group of goon-ish upper-classmen was surrounding the punch bowl.

"Easy, Ryota. Why else do you think they're called freshies?" a medium-sized guy snickered nervously at the person they called Ryota.

"Beats me." Ryota said, bored. "I could grow a moustache waiting for anything to happen here. I can't believe everyone's looking forward to this." He slapped a hand on the table to indicate what must be his clear annoyance. Everyone else outside his group was in motion, a glass of alcohol too many in their veins. They were literally in a sway.

Just then, Sakuragi Hanamichi proposed a drunken toast as he leaped agilely on the makeshift platform. There was an innocent smile on his face that didn't used to be there when he bullied me that morning. A streak of artificial light was diffused all over him, rendering its innocence more and more awkward by the minute.

"May this be the best year Shohoku has seen!" he cried, and was met with a thunderous, inebriated applause. "No need to worry, comrades. For Hanamichi Sakuragi, greatest dorm man in the world, has come to join you in your glory!!!" he went on. This time the applause was accompanied by laughter. I can't be sure if that was the reaction Sakuragi wanted, but I was sure, too, that he was too drunk to bother searching his feelings. I hunkered my head lower, feeling guilt by association. Why the hell did I have to be hurled along with this moron? It depresses me to think that we should breathe the same room air henceforward.

I guess it took another five minutes before he actually quit announcing his self-fulfilling prophecies. Sakuragi's abnormality, as I'd prefer to call it, was the one thing they couldn't take away from him. He was shameless, and seemed to take pride in being so; it didn't cost him anything but his dignity after all.

"Oh my god, another useless git is the last thing I need. Why don't these thugs ever learn how to fucking conserve their breath? Geez, this is why I hate freshmen. Let's beat it, Yasuda." Ryota complained again, glaring. Around this time, an altogether new twang was added to his voice: frustration.

"Oh come on, Ryota. Will you listen to what you're saying? We can't miss this. There may be good recruits here—"

"Don't turn this into a lucky coincidence. If they're interested to join the club, they can go to the try-outs. As of the moment, it appears that now's the good time to split." Ryota hissed.

"Well, on that score, I'll hang around. Akagi might need me later. I'll just tell him you had a headache." Yasuda replied almost apologetically. I'm sure Ryota was having more than just a headache.

"Sure." At that, Ryota retired, no more interested than before. I gave him a casual glance as he passed me by en route to the narrow exit, though I didn't mark any shift in his expression. Like hell I gave a fuck anyway. His distaste for new faces stuck out a mile. Because of what, search me. I'm sure he could've asked me to shove off if he was in the mood for it, but I'm sure he wasn't. As he left the room, I felt a sudden warmth replace his space.

I scanned the crowd. The energy was beginning to wear off a little, the atmosphere easing in, sobriety returning. There were about fifteen freshmen in the running, including me. It made me wonder if getting along existed in their vocabulary; for one thing, it didn't in mine. I was better equipped than most of them in terms of the physical, and any other advantage I had over them was pretty much everyone's guess, at least at first. They were such puny, inconsequential things that I felt pretty much displaced, unless I was blowing my own horn all this time and reading into it too much. Sure, like any other teenager, I was prone to developing quite a number of superiority issues. At that time, I didn't see any use for all of them. Perhaps the sentiment was even mutual.

"What a night, eh?"

I wheeled around, red-handed with the mean thoughts I was then nursing. A slim person with glasses smiled kindly at me, his one hand in his pocket, the other holding a wine glass. "You could use a drink, you know," he chuckled.

"I'm fine." I responded. It occurred to me that I hadn't permitted myself to touch a single drink that night. That's when curiosity rode me.

"Are you sure? This is good. Cognac, fifteen years old, and it's off its cap and it's all yours. You don't find them anywhere nowadays. You'll be sorry."

"Okay. I'll give it a shot." I succumbed before I even started to fight it. If my parents knew about it, they'd have me murdered right on the spot.

He led me over to the table through a thick film of man-made smoke. The ambience was starting to irritate me. The table seemed to have only scarcely survived the raid: the platters were overturned, glasses rolling off or otherwise shattered on the floor, odd potteries doing slow exhibitions. What was in the punch bowl was diluted in melted ice that it already became transparent, nasty particles settling at the bottom. The assortment of finger foods on the silver wares looked worse than scavenged, tramped over, and vomited back. Nobody seemed to mind it; everyone was far too preoccupied in his own public display of idiocy to take note of anything else, hygiene even less. In a minute the person who led me over handed the half glass he was in the process of preparing.

"Here's to a wonderful start for you, Rukawa-kun."

I stared at him and fought back a frown. He was the first person in the room to acknowledge my presence. More so, he knew my name.

"I'm the deputy head of Shohoku Dormitory. It's my job to get to know each member." He winked good-naturedly at me. "Kogure Kiminobu. Nice to meet you." He cheerfully held out a hand, which I took. So this is what it's about.

"My pleasure." I uttered what must be the oldest formulaic script for such gatherings while not meaning either of the words in the phrase. I nearly beat myself for it--its anti-comical lameness--afterward.

"I figure you must be tired. I know it's been a long day for you but you gotta bear it tonight, because this is one of the most important events in the school calendar. There can be no second chance for this." Kogure explained. I suspected he thought he owed me an explanation. For that, I was almost sorry for acting like a snob on a high horse for not mingling.

"So I heard." I said, remembering Akagi's invitation.

"You will find the members very interesting. They're not really all this, er, bad, I mean, not in the sense that you presently understand. How do you find them, so far? Honestly?"

"Wild. Childish." I said after a few seconds, at a loss for another adjective. Seeing Kogure raise his left eyebrow, I hastened to add, "Present company excluded."

He laughed just then, a seemingly kind-hearted, well-intentioned laugh. "I see. The next morning I doubt you would even recognize them from how they behaved tonight." He said. "Anyway, Rukawa, there's someone I should ask you to see before you end the night, otherwise it wouldn't be complete. He's absent at the moment: he said he has a stomachache. Would you mind checking on him?"

I twitched slightly at the oddness of Kogure-sempai's request. I audibly cleared my throat, where I believe my voice got temporarily jammed. Who could it be this time? It could only be worse, right? It wasn't like I hadn't had enough of weird identities cramming spaces in my brain; like, I really wanted to get to know more other than the handful with me. All these thoughts swept over me, failing to register Kogure's actual presence smack right in front of me. Indeed, I had nothing more to say and because there was nothing more to say, I took a huge gulp from my cognac. I choked, but inwardly.

"Please, Rukawa. I've asked your other batch-mates to come see him. Some of them already have, and some of them promised to meet him some time afterward. I think it's best for you to see him now. He's not feeling very well so he wouldn't detain you long. He's actually our Public Relations Officer and it's imperative that new students in this dorm get to know him as soon as they can."

"What's his name?" I inquired, as if it put things on an even plane to know his name.

"Mitsui. Mitsui Hisashi. His room is 309."

"Okay. I'll go once I drain this." I answered, far from relieved. I had no idea what compelled me to honor his stupid and seemingly unnecessary request. Maybe it was his aura. Maybe it was his very adult charm that ever so successfully concealed the fact that what he did was to actually badger me out of my wits. Whatever it was, it only intensified my tenseness toward the task he just so carelessly hurled at me.

"Well, that's the spirit." Kogure said and his merry expression changed a fraction. "You might find Mitsui a little, erm, different. Those who've known him either grew to—I'm not going to sugarcoat it—abhor him or love him to bits. It's just either of the two extremes. Well, who knows, Rukawa; you might be the one to break the tradition." He winked at me again as a gesture of goodbye, and proceeded to move on to the next freshman on the list.

I watched him go on with his business. I watched him for what seemed like hours until I realized that what I was in fact doing was delaying my meeting with the infamous Mitsui Hisashi. Looking back, I very nearly reversed my good opinion of Kogure then, and I'm thankful that I didn't. if I did, it would have only earned me another sorry conscience. Kogure-sempai would be there to put me out of a tight squeeze every time I was on the verge of catastrophically screwing up. He would fulfill more than a vice-president's duty in an attitude that wasn't self-serving, and therefore rare, and would go on to iron things out just when they seemed hopeless. He would be the one to mend our ways for us without a harsh word of reproach; even then, you wouldn't catch him making reference to it at some future time. True, he had no other capital but his good sense and patience, but that's precisely why I looked up to him the way I never looked up to anybody. It was, to put it minimally, impossible to dislike him. That night, meeting him the first time, I didn't know all of these yet, and I doubt if he ever came to know about it. I just watched him with a semi-indifferent irritation as I gravitated toward yet another strange tale, that with Mitsui Hisashi.

I took a final sip from my cognac before I marched out of that humbug of a party. None seemed to have noticed my departure and I doubt if anyone would care if they ever got around it. I was half tipsy from the drink and hot on the neck. At some point, I lost count of the steps I was taking. Perhaps the cognac was meant to dispel any reluctance I might've had toward meeting Mitsui, in which case, it did a good job out of me. I took a round trip on the second floor as I attempted to grope my trail. Before I could feel the surrounding whirl around me, I was in front of Room 309. There seemed to be no recent activity of mischief in the shiny-clean corridor; just silence, pure, unadulterated silence mocking the windy night away. I began to pound on the door, almost subconsciously. Were there occupants in the next rooms, a nice little havoc would've ensued. It creaked open after a few good knocks.

"Wow. Yet another one who sure knows how to get a rise out of his seniors."

A tall guy in red robes stood in the next slide. The shiny fabric of his garment flowed all the way down to the carpet. A faint scent of aftershave seemed to have tracked him, but an even stronger whiff of something alcoholic swam with it, and I'm sure it wasn't from the cognac I just had. He was making tiny movements with his lips, whereas his dark blue eyes focused on me, transcending, far-seeing, stabbing little marbles that they were, half hidden by two thick sets of eyelashes. The exposed portion of his skin revealed an almost ridiculously smooth surface that was slightly pink from humidity, more womanly than altogether manly. His hair was un-brushed, which seemed to be the only thing amiss in his otherwise complete image. Over and above everything, he had the most beautiful face I had ever seen. But he was furrowing his brows in obvious annoyance, which I instantly and unknowingly hoped was not directed to me.

"Kogure-sempai asked me to visit you, Mitsui-sempai." I said quietly. The inclination to be polite swooped in just in time I opened my mouth. If such a person ever existed to command my conduct, it would've been Mitsui. I just knew it right then, right at the moment my heart started jumping in and out of my rib cage upon the glorious sight of this person.

"I wouldn't wonder. Would you like to come in?" Mitsui said rather haughtily. As he glided back to his room I noticed how much his graceful movements fit him so, or else I was not so much in the condition to judge correctly, thanks to the cognac. But that was just half a glass!

I yielded to his invitation and followed his lead. Once swallowed inside, I almost tripped: I had no notion that that's what was in store for me. The room, Mitsui Hisashi's preposterously furnished flat, was a room fit for a queen. A king-size four-poster bed lay in the middle, under a round golden carpet imported from somewhere down south. Under his pillow, a half finished decanter of burgundy was sloppily tucked, as if placed there for emergency purposes. I was right; he was carousing the night away in privacy, away from the party I never wanted to attend. His furniture was superfluous, and even had an art nouveau appeal to them, not to mention must've cost a fortune. His wallpapers seemed to meld with the overdesigned background. On the ceiling was a gold and crystal chandelier nobody would think of buying, unless he's some royalty jerk. It became clear just then why Mitsui was in a silk robe; to effect the air of a true blue monarch. He must be out of his mind to live in a place like this.

"Fancy, isn't it? It's my mom's room's replica, you know. I always drove her out of hers so I could sleep there. When they sent me here I figured I was going to miss that room, that's when I came up with the brilliant idea to transform this boring quarter to something this magnificent. Not the same size though, but it would do just fine." Mitsui recited all this languidly. I, on the other hand, hung on to every word. He was loose in the head, alright.

"Hm."

"Well, why the long face? I suppose that thorough little prig Kogure dragged you to my doorstep. He's gotten into the habit of sending me freshmen for reasons I don't even understand. Why, he doesn't trust me enough to believe that I'd meet them on my own volition. He must think I don't care. Seriously, you can't expect a boy that smart to find out what life is about: it's about caring, right?" Mitsui giggled. I couldn't detect the sarcasm that should've been in his voice, but then again, that might be just part of his poison.

"Kogure-sempai asked me to check on you because you aren't feeling well."

"Did he? I wasn't feeling well. But I've been fine all afternoon. I didn't want to go to that party because I'm not interested in getting acquainted with you guys. And besides, there's that Sakuragi jerk. Have you met him?"

"He's my room-mate." I said and pondered for a while. If Mitsui didn't care about meeting us freshmen, which he as good as said, what exactly prevented Kogure from thinking that he didn't care?

"How unfortunate. He barged in on me this morning and yanked me off my bed and did real offensive things to me and my body. Truly beastly. What a fine greeting for his PRO. I suppose he wants to gain recognition on his first day as the only freshman to abuse Mitsui Hisashi. Freshmen are like that, pushy and predictable. They're absolutely vulnerable to think and act like they know every last trick in the book the very first time they set foot in this boarding school. They're just unbelievable."

"I'm not." I mumbled under breath, my irritation reaching a farther point on the scale. If Sakuragi did do that to Mitsui, I probably owed him a favor.

"I'm glad you know you're not. That bastard got me pegged real bad. He's in fact the reason why I was ill all morning. Well, anyway, you seem to be more peaceful. I hope you wouldn't fail to deliver the goods."

"Yes, sempai."

"I could get used to this. Don't mistake me: I'm not a perverted person, though you might hear a lot of that around here. I'd rather not broach the subject, though. At any rate, I'm a really nice person," He paused and smiled, his very white, even teeth showing, "until I decide I've been nice long enough."

I glanced back at him, racking my head for what he meant by that. My sobriety hit rock bottom. His smile was so natural it was enough to drive anyone out of his wits. I was contracting its symptoms for all the world knew. He continued flashing that insipid smile to me, like he'd never get sick of it or something. What he said floated inside me: I would remember it clearly because it was one of the few true things he'd say.

"Well then, I might've scared you already to my heart's content. I guess you must be exhausted. I dismiss you, Kuwata." Mitsui said finally.

"It's Rukawa."

"Whatever. Bye."

I closed the door behind me, frowning. A tuff of gray clouds seemed to have been lifted off my chest. The night outside had gotten specially ripe, the winds gentler but no less cool. Mitsui Hisashi, they seemed to whisper. I turned the name over my head for the nth time since I heard it first from Kogure-sempai. Mitsui Hisashi was the last person I got to meet at the Shohoku Dormitory but, I had to agree, by no means least. Simultaneously, I came to realize I would have a hard time classifying him, a far harder time than I would ever have in assigning Sakuragi, Ryota, and Kogure to their respective roles. Beside Mitsui, those three would appear just as real a case as any other; ordinary, plain, human. I plodded back to my room, not knowing how and when I managed it, in addition to being more pensive than I ever expected. Mitsui Hisashi. He got me fair and square.

I lay on my bed with the snoring Sakuragi on the other side of the room. Something about the blatant crisis that was his bed sheets made me pretty certain that more than two people dragged him all the way from the party hall. I smiled at the picture it produced inside my head. I smiled, in spite of the premature hangover I got from the cognac, or was it something incurred from Mitsui? I smiled nevertheless. I basked in the glory of the soundless night, droning, darkening, deepening. And I decided to block him from my thoughts, knowing full well it wouldn't render me any real service at all, either in the way of fantasy or other.

It was futile, however.

TBC