Disclaimer: I don't own Monochrome Factor or any of its characters.

Author's Note: Wrote this while listening to Lisa Komine's "Sora ni Saku" and some other stuff, but that song alone kind of stayed in my brain… And I only just realized, the people who watched the animé but didn't read the manga wouldn't know who Ryuuko is! So to those people: Read the manga. Some really wonderful people actually scanlated Monochrome Factor beyond what Tokyopop has done so far and shared it. You can get a hardcopy when it becomes available in your place (support the mangaka!), but in the meantime, there's some nice stuff waiting for you to read if you're not lazy.


The King is Dead, Long Live the King

Chapter Four: Interlude "King for a Day"

"He's not here?"

Kou shrugged, pretending nonchalance. He slouched further into Ryuuko's throne and slung one leg over the armrest, then tapped his hand against the back of the throne to emphasize its supposed vacancy. He nodded at Shirogane with a hostile wolf's grin: hard eyes and pointed teeth. "Like I told you."

"Quit lying," Shirogane said. "Bring him out or I will destroy you." And because he could rub it in the face of everyone barring Ryuuko, he added, low and glacial, "Brat."

"Hey," Kou said. He looked annoyed. He jumped out of Ryuuko's throne and stretched. Standing, there wasn't much difference between their heights. Kou could even be taller, which Shirogane found mildly irritated him.

Kou went over to one side of the throne and sat there, leaning his back comfortably against the wood with a soft sigh. And then, seeming to abruptly remember that Shirogane was there, he arranged his face in a pout and explained to the air, not looking at Shirogane: "Ryuuko's gone out."

Shirogane paused in unrecognized worry. Finally he asked: "Did he bring his other Children with him?"

"No," Kou replied, with a little surprised and curious rise at the end of the word. "He went out by himself." Then Kou gave a slight start and smiled. "It's not about any holes. This month's been pretty peaceful actually."

This made Shirogane frown, partly because he disliked being read so easily, but mostly because he had no real idea of where Ryuuko would be, outside of his palace, on an excursion that wasn't related to work. Ryuuko was always wary of causing attribute inversions, so he could hardly be walking casually around in the shadow world, but there seemed to be no place in the light world that Ryuuko might actually go to either. Unless he was in an errand that Kou was trying to hide from him.

"Where is he then?"

Kou scratched at his head. "See," he said. "I don't know. He'll be back in a day though." And then he added, lightly: "That's how it is, Shirogane-san. So you can leave now. Oh, but I'm not driving you out, okay? Although it seems you don't have a reason to stay around here anymore. The air around you is also making me feel iffy."

Only a single eye twitch betrayed the fact that Shirogane was getting angry. He took in a slow breath, and, drawing on all the patience he possessed, refrained from cheerfully murdering Kou.

"I find that hard to believe of Ryuuko," Shirogane remarked instead, knowing it would probably make Kou say something that he might otherwise keep from him. "Leaving the throne unoccupied is hardly something a King should do."

"You really shouldn't talk, Shirogane-san," Kou said. "After all, you're here."

"It's irresponsible."

"But it's 'King for a Day,' " Kou said, rising to the bait. "We do this every year."

Shirogane inclined his head to one side. " 'King for a Day'?"

"Shisui-san thought it up. I guess you really wouldn't know, but it's one of the things we look forward to in the light world." Kou stood up to plop himself happily onto the throne. "It's a chance for one of the Children to be King for one whole day. We decide through a simple draw, and whoever's King gets this crown"—Kou proudly held up a small gold item— "and he can even order the other Children to do embarrassing things." Kou stopped to chuckle a bit, and to lean back with his hands laced behind his head.

"Six months ago, we had Shisui's, so it's Ryuuko's this time. I heard from Lulu that the only event over on your side is 'Kiss the Kokuchi.' How lame!"

Shirogane clenched his hand. "What would you do if something happened?" he asked, and at his tone Kou sat up properly.

"You're not thinking of invading, are you? 'Cause I'll stop you, you know, and it's not like I lost all contact with Ryuuko. We have Shisui-san over here too. Why do you think our Kings have different dates for their 'King for a Day'?"

"It's still risky," Shirogane said. "Leaving without a guard, and leaving a Child as the presiding King. Why would Ryuuko agree to this?"

Kou looked over at Shirogane. "It's not something to be mad about, is it? Or are you upset because he didn't tell you?"

Shirogane glared up at Kou's smug face. He turned around, the movement sharp and unusually awkward for him, and without another word started to walk away.

Behind him he heard Kou call out an insolent good-bye, and a short while later remark in a tone full of impish glee: "Oh, what's this?" And then: "I found a strand of Ryuuko's hair. Lucky!"

Shirogane stopped walking, and then very deliberately turned back. "Hand that over, Kou."

"What?" Kou asked, his voice a bit shaky. "Don't look like that, Shirogane-san. It's not like I was going to keep it, you know."

"Then give it here."

"But…how can I put it? It's a bit rare. You won't find any in the shower. And it's so shiny. It's a waste to throw it away…"

"Kou," Shirogane said with careful enunciation. "Don't make me any angrier than I already am now."

In the frozen silence that followed, Shirogane moved closer to pluck the strand of Ryuuko's hair from Kou's fingers. Kou let out a final whine.

"Can't I just look at it for a while?"

Sawaki was leading several leashed kokuchi back in when Shirogane returned to his palace in the shadow world and immediately called for a meeting. His Children went, those who didn't have missions, plus Homurabi and his own Children. Shirogane looked at them all indifferently, and then announced: "We're going to do it as well. The 'King for a Day.' "

Several Children looked at each other, confused, while others, thinking they had to, raised an equally confused cheer. Sawaki seemed about to say something, tried several times, and finally admitted, "I don't know what that is."

"I know what that is!" Lulu said, jumping on the balls of her feet, while Homurabi pressed his lips together in an uncertain scowl. "But…I'm already King. Can I still participate?"

Shirogane ignored all outbursts, and instead of answering brought out a box and shook it in their faces. "All right. Draw. Whoever gets the slip with the red dot in it is the King in my place. I'll be gone for a day. Don't call me."

Shirogane put the box down on the meeting table and walked away. He hesitated briefly at the door.

"Have fun," he said.

He shut the door.

Homurabi and the Children looked at each other.

"For now," Sawaki cut uneasily through the silence, "Why don't we try it?" He put his hand in, brought out a slip and unfolded it.

"It says 'GOON.' " Sawaki paused. He reached into his coat pocket and brought out a handkerchief to dab at his eyes. "Does he really think of me that way? Not 'loyal servant,' or 'person keeping the palace from falling apart,' or even 'daily walker of kokuchi'? Or how about 'most normal-looking Shin with a money sense who gets ordered to buy groceries because of it'?"

"It just means you're not King," Lulu said, while another Child nodded in slow thought and said: "The red dot, right?"

Someone raised a tentative question: "What if one of us pricked a finger?"

Homurabi clapped his hands, and immediately all heads turned to him. "No cheating! If I see a shin blade out, someone's head is going to be removed. Now, everyone besides Sawaki, who we all know isn't going to be King, put your hands in the box and get a slip. My brother left me in charge, so we're going to do this right."

"When did he do that?" Lulu asked, vaguely giggly, but she put her hand in the box along with everyone else. Homurabi also took a slip. If the slip declared him King, then it proved he was really meant to be Shirogane's little brother. Not that he needed something like that to prove that he was, but it didn't hurt to give everyone else proof now and then. After all, even with the lipstick and the hair, they didn't have much of a resemblance. Homurabi gulped and shut his eyes.

"No luck," one of Shirogane's Children said.

"The 'goon' slip, huh?"

Homurabi unfolded his own slip and, remembering he had to, pried his eyes open to look.

"But I'm King!" he exclaimed in offended shock.

Lulu let out a big squeal and started jumping on the table. "Guess who's King?" she asked. She attempted a pirouette, but slipped and fell, scattering a few Children from their chairs.

Sawaki groaned.

Shirogane patted one kokuchi absently on the nose, bringing out the strand of hair that he'd twisted into a miniature braid like a bracelet to be sniffed. One of the kokuchi tried chewing on it experimentally, and Shirogane pulled it away and gave the kokuchi a swift kick. The others nodded at the scent, a liquid bobbing of heads. They slithered away, and Shirogane followed after.

They hesitated at the boundary, sliding in the air around Shirogane in agitated rings. Shirogane opened a path to the light world, and the kokuchi trailed in like black rope released from a spool. Shirogane looked around before stepping in himself. It was a bit unexpected, but that particular boundary line, he saw, led to a school.

Shirogane had never entered a school during daytime before, and never when there was no hole to seal, so the amount of activity in the grounds surprised him. Students in jogging pants and white shirts running along a track or playing ball games, while up the buildings there were several opened windows and sultry or bored heads poking out; students with window seats stared out at the people below or at the sky, eyes glassy with blueness.

The kokuchi were getting restless, sensing all the human bodies around them with the opposite attribute. Shirogane held them in check with the order to find the Rei King. The kokuchi entered a building, gliding over stairs and down hallways. Finally, they ran ahead of Shirogane and tapped their bodies against a door, hissing. Shirogane nodded at them and, sensing their growing agitation, allowed them to go back. He pulled the door open, and the one kokuchi that had remained with him slithered in across the floor, navigating the narrow area between students' desks. About a foot behind one chair, the kokuchi pulled itself up, so for a moment it looked like a shadow that Ryuuko had impossibly cast.

Ryuuko's eyes were on the blackboard, but now he turned his head to stare at Shirogane standing before the open door. The movement completely unhurried, Ryuuko raised his hand and put one finger against his lips, smiling slightly against the finger, and Shirogane felt more than thought: 'I don't understand.'

Homurabi lay grumpily on the floor and tried not to meet anyone's eyes. Sawaki, leaning over him, tried not to meet his eyes. Homurabi saw this with grim satisfaction, and also that Sawaki was sweating a bit. At least he wasn't the only one suffering.

"I like him," Homurabi said. "He makes me feel…urgh…" Homurabi stamped down on a blush and muttered: "Like I have a…have… a blood-pumping organ in my chest."

"Mou!" Lulu cried out in frustration, flicking her hair back and crossing her legs. She leaned back on the throne and waved a hand as if brushing flies away from her face. "Put more feeling into it, Homu-chin. That's supposed to be the good part. Don't ruin Lulu's play for everyone else!"

"That's it," Homurabi whispered. "Everyone who's seen this play is going to be erased. Sawaki, you're going to help me."

"Softly," Sawaki said, although he also nodded teary agreement to Homurabi. "We're still on, remember? Your line."

"Urgh," Homurabi said, and repeated, irately: "Like I have a heart." He looked at Sawaki. Swallowed.

"You make me feel the same."

The room was silent for exactly three seconds, and then erupted in catcalls and squeals that Homurabi felt was certainly not appropriate to the play.

The class ended after a few more minutes and a new teacher came in, shuffling test papers. The students put up a universal protest, slumping forward on their textbooks or leaning back in their chairs. Presently, Ryuuko stood from his desk. Shirogane had entered the room to stand silently behind Ryuuko, and now he followed after, out into the hall and up another flight of stairs to the deserted rooftop, where they were met by warm air and warm cement cooling under the cotton-wrapped pin of sun.

Shirogane stopped beside Ryuuko, who bent his arms at the elbows and leaned heavily on the railing.

"It's a nice place, isn't it?"

"I don't really care," Shirogane said with cruel truthfulness. He hadn't spared the school much thought. He looked out at the students below at their game, sweating and getting dirty, and the gates beyond, the traffic of more human bodies and the occasional cars.

"If I wore a Doppler and jumped from here, people would think I was killing myself. But then I guess I'd really split myself open."

"No," Shirogane said. "The Doppler breaks and you revert into being a Rei."

Ryuuko laughed. "You're ruining my bit of fiction, Shirogane."

Shirogane rested his hands on the rail. "Why would you even go here?"

Ryuuko frowned, and a line appeared between his clear brows and was gone. He stroked his hair from his cheek. "It's nice to do things like this once in a while," he eventually said. "At times, I think there are a lot of things I want to do. Like live, I guess. And then I get a day like this, and I don't know what to do with it. So I ended up staying here. Last time it was a sushi bar. One day isn't enough, but if I wished for a longer vacation and got it, I wonder how much would change? Maybe there's no difference between wanting to do everything and having nothing you really want to do." Ryuuko looked up at the sky. "Did you listen to the lecture before?"

"No."

"It was boring," Ryuuko said. "But I enjoyed it."

Shirogane stared at him. "Because you're a boring person," Shirogane said, and Ryuuko grinned.

"That's true too."

He tipped himself over the rail.

Shirogane moved quickly enough to grab onto Ryuuko's wrist, letting out a surprised gasp when he banged his shin sharply against the railing as Ryuuko's weight threatened to pull him along. He tightened his hold on Ryuuko, steadying himself with his other hand on the rail. Ryuuko gazed up at him, eyes wide and looking more than a little puzzled that Shirogane started to get angry again.

"What are you doing?" Shirogane asked, his voice coming out a bit rough and too loud even for his own ears. "Do you think you're proving something with this?"

Slowly, Ryuuko blinked, and then reached up to rest his free hand over the fingers of Shirogane's hand closed around his wrist in a vice. "If you let go," Ryuuko said, "I promise I won't splatter."

"Like hell."

"Shirogane," Ryuuko said a bit weakly, "Idiot. I'm not even wearing a Doppler."

Shirogane hauled him up the rail. Still not letting go of the other's wrist, Shirogane pulled back with his other hand and slapped Ryuuko hard across the cheek. Ryuuko slumped down to the ground. He rubbed numbly at his cheek, and then at his wrist when Shirogane freed him.

"If you're going to pretend you're human," Shirogane said, "shouldn't you go all the way, you bastard?"

Ryuuko froze up. And then, quite unexpectedly, he started to laugh.

"I…" Shirogane turned his face away, and forced himself to continue: "I shouldn't have hit you." Ryuuko had gone quiet to listen to him, and Shirogane finished stiffly: "I apologize."

Ryuuko shook his head.

"You're being awfully kind today, Shirogane," he remarked, resting his back against the rail. His face glowed faintly amber-white under the desultory sun, the blood rising like a blush on one cheek from the slap Shirogane had given him. It was the first time Shirogane had seen Ryuuko with an unguarded face, when he'd dropped his usual mask of calm and looked only tired and happy and faintly stupid.

"Since we're here," Ryuuko said now, offhandedly, "Is there some place you want to go?" He made a vague gesture with his hand. "A school must be too boring for you, right?"

Shirogane looked away from Ryuuko. He considered.

"I don't know," he admitted, oddly flustered.

"Any place is fine, since it's only for today. There won't be an attribute inversion if we're together, right? Or if it still causes some problems, I'll fix it later. So, Shirogane. Where do you want to go?"

Shirogane sighed. Ryuuko looked at him expectantly.

"A ramen store?"

Ryuuko looked surprised for a moment, but then smiled.

"All right."

Sawaki put the last pile down with a satisfying thump on the desk, leaning on it to smile his sweet, suitable revenge on Lulu.

"And please read through these, King."

Lulu let out a sob.


Author's End Note: Shirogane and Ryuuko in a ramen store…what would people think if they saw that…? Lulu's play is a reference to Kingdom Hearts 2, with Sawaki as Sora and Homurabi as Axel (because those two really look alike). Yeah, the game couldn't have been invented sixteen years ago (Akira's human life span), but you never know. Maybe Lulu influenced people into making that game, or so that's how I choose to explain it. :) Writing this was really good stress relief, but I'm finding it hard to keep the humor! To justify myself a bit…we all know where this has to end, right? It's not even a spoiler if I say the ending now. I have a hazy idea of where this is supposed to go, but I won't really know anything until I start writing. If you have suggestions or anything, please let me know in a review. Anyway, thanks for reading. :D