Hoshido 2

"Where were you?"

Gyah!" Takumi nearly jumped out of his skin. "Hinoka, don't do that."

"I'll ask again, where were you?"

"Out. Geez, do you need to know every aspect of my life?"

"When you come back with that in your hair, yeah."

Takumi reached up, immediately noticing the extension he'd forgotten to take out of his hair. "What? Mom won't let me dye it, so this is the next best thing."

"She won't let you dye it because it's weird." Hinoka returned.

"No, I may actually look like I'm not some affair brat." Takumi snapped back. "Face it, I look like I don't belong."

"Takumi." Hinoka said, following him back to the back room. "What makes you say that?"

"Ryoma has Mom's brown hair, and so do Kamui and Corrin. You and Sakura have the bright red our maternal grandmother had before she went grey. Me? I'm silver, through and through. Everyone thinks either Mom slept around to get me, or she adopted me from Dad's whore that popped me from her crotch. In any case, no-one thinks I'm completely your sibling." Takumi pulled the tie from his hair, removed the colored extension, and tied his hair back up.

"Is something wrong?" Ryoma asked as he stepped closer to Hinoka.

"He's question things again." Hinoka replied. "I caught him with a colored extension in his hair."

"What color?"

"Black."

"Takumi."

"Shut it!" came the snapped reply. They could tell he was suffering again. Their brother had a massive inferiority complex that was just accented by the fact that he alone had been born with silver hair. He had medication to try and stabilize his mood, but he often ignored them in favor of actually being able to function and think. He hated the medications because he felt sluggish, stupid, and often couldn't hold his balance on them.

Ryoma sighed and stepped into the shared room he and his younger brother had. There was a third bed, unoccupied, that had once belonged to Kamui before he'd run off to work for Club Nohr.

Takumi was lying on his bed, looking at his cell phone. "Go away." he said softly.

"I'm not leaving." Ryoma said, coming to sit on the edge of the bed.

Takumi turned the screen off before Ryoma could see the image he'd been looking at. "What do you want?" he asked.

"It's almost opening time." Ryoma said. "Come on, it's the last day of Spring Break."

"Yeah, I know. Mother's going to be here tonight to tell us how good or bad we did. What's it matter, anyway?"

"Club Nohr is our club's rival." Ryoma said. "It's just the way things are."

"And yet they do things so different from us." Takumi said, sitting up.

"No they don't." Ryoma said.

"Have you been there?" Takumi asked. "Have you seen how they do things?"

"No, and I don't care to." Ryoma replied. "What I care about is you, and my family."

"Yeah, well, there's a member of our family working there, remember? Kamui works there."

"Kamui abandoned us, and Club Hoshido." Hinoka said from the door. "It's a good thing Corrin stayed."

"Kamui left because you wouldn't let him do what he does best. Club Nohr lets him do that." Takumi pointed out. "And Azura came here because we let her do what she does best."

"Azura came because we're the better club." Hinoka returned. "Now come on, club's opening."

Takumi sighed. "Coming."

Ryoma paused, noticing the black streak of hair sitting on Takumi's vanity. It wasn't the only one, there was a strip of brown and a red one there as well. Being the eldest, Ryoma had no real idea how Takumi was feeling being the one with the odd-colored hair. But he knew that there was something bothering his brother. He wanted to fix it, make Takumi feel better, but how? They had always treated him like family, so why was he always questioning himself?

It was something Ryoma was going to have to think on.