Chapter 8: Welcome Home, Jack


Before Jack even knew it, he was back to school and feeling better than ever. He had missed school through Wednesday, so while going back on Thursday felt a little pointless, he none the less still wanted to get back to school. Spending his sick days alone was making him a little lonely, as well as stir-crazy. Yusei noted with a smile how happy he seemed to be when the three of them stepped out the door on Thursday morning. The amount of energy Jack had, saying as it had to have built up when he was sitting around with nothing to do but rest, seemed to be pretty substantial. He could only imagine how pumped he would be for Gym that day.

Carly was more than thrilled to see Jack at the school gates that morning, and wasn't shy at all when he approached her, pulling him immediately into a hug that had some of the girls lingering around in the girls' school yard glowering at her in jealousy. Especially when she parted with her dear, adoptive little brother by holding one of her hands on his face while her lips planted a friendly kiss on his cheek. He tried to ignore her lip gloss having come off a little on his cheek, leaving a shimmering kiss mark, but what he really hoped was that the other girls wouldn't chastise her for being so close with him. Hopefully, if they had any sense in their head, which they most likely did not, they would drop the subject if her sexuality was revealed to them.

Jack would admit that he once had a small crush on Carly; she was a beautiful girl a grade ahead of him who had taken him under her wing and became one of his very first friends. They both knew that they loved each other very much, but as time evolved, it turned not into the romance they had expected, but a big sister, little brother relationship that they hadn't. Neither of them had siblings, so they fit together in that aspect damn near perfectly. It made things painless when Carly came out to Jack when she was fourteen, telling him, "I'm a lesbian."

In essence, Jack almost felt like Carly was his last sense of normalcy.

Jack wore a small smile for a majority of the day. He smiled when his teacher handed him his new blazer, which had arrived during his absence, and he smiled when he enveloped his body with the remainder of his missing uniform; the blue blazer with two golden buttons to keep it closed. He never buttoned both of them, just the top button, while he left the bottom one undone.

His brain worked with fervor as he jotted down notes so quickly that the teacher couldn't quite keep up with him; he honestly had never been this happy to be back in school before. By the time Gym rolled around, he felt so abuzz with energy that he was glad to change quickly in the locker room before heading outside to the soccer field. He and Yusei teamed up together for one-on-one practice before they were split up into teams, each of them putting on a loose, colored jersey over their Gym clothes to differentiate the two teams. The two house mates made it onto the same team; Jack took an offense position, and the rest of the team opted for Yusei to be the goalie, as he had proven to be one of the best when it came to defense. Most likely with all of his history in turning down girls, and sometimes needing to push them away.

That, and his martial arts training also seemed to come in handy.

By the time Gym was over and their team had won, Jack began to cough lightly a bit persistently. Once they returned to the classroom, he dug out his inhaler and inhaled two puffs, feeling his chest stop constricting around his lungs.

He joined the Fudos for lunch, as Carly was busying herself in the GSA club room with some of her fellow members, and the three sat and laughed with each other beneath the tree where the two siblings always had lunch with each other. Hikaru even poked fun at Jack for being so lively during Gym, having seen him in action from over the fence. All of the teasing aside, she was glad to see him so full of energy, and able to eat solid food again. She had nearly pissed herself laughing when she had witnessed Jack practically inhaling his food the night before.

"The best way to a man's heart is through his stomach," she had said.

By the end of the day, Jack was parting ways with his new house mates and walked downtown to his job with Carly. When he returned home, to his surprise the twins had been waiting on him to eat dinner, where they announced that his bed had been delivered when they got home. Yusei had put it together in no time, saying as he was quite the handyman, as Jack had come to learn. So handy that, in fact, he took apart their microwave and fixed it himself when he had been bored on Tuesday afternoon. One less thing to spend money on.

"I've been taking things apart and putting them back together since I was just a little thing." Yusei had told Jack when he was testing to make sure that the microwave was working again. "Anything I can get my hands on that has screws, I can take apart and figure out how it works. Hell, if you toss something broken my way, I can fix it just by taking it apart figuring out the problem like that. My father says that I'm a mechanical genious."

"I can see why." Jack had replied.

Friday came and went in the same way that Thursday had, but Jack was more than happy to sleep in on Saturday, cozied up underneath his blankets and quilt. When he had been making his bed on Thursday evening, Yusei asked him where he had gotten such a beautiful quilt.

"My mother made it." Jack had told him. "She always really liked making things by hand. She gave it to me for my birthday last year."

"Say," Yusei began. "When is your birthday, anyway?"

"Not until November." Jack replied. "November seventh."

When Jack woke up on Saturday, with sunshine peaking through the windows and heard the sounds of the happy birds content to just sing the morning away, he felt more at home than he had that entire week. As he sat up in bed, he looked out the window that overlooked the front of the house, and the path that went through the woods and led into town. He smiled at the beautiful morning and the clear blue sky.

With a turn of his head, he looked at his mother's picture on the night stand. He smiled at her and said, "Good morning, Mama."


"So Jack, have any plans for today?" Hikaru inquired as the trio was preparing breakfast together. She was on omelet duty, while Yusei prepared breakfast sausage and bacon, and Jack was chopping up fruit for a fruit salad.

"I'm meeting Carly at Little Cup o' Joe's around eleven." Jack replied. "We usually have coffee together at least once a week, so she called me up last night and asked if I'd like to go."

"Do you think you could do us a favor and pick up some groceries before you come back?" Hikaru asked. "We're short on some things. I've got a list written out and I'll give you the money."

"Sure, no problem." Jack said, dropping cut-up strawberries into the bowl for the fruit salad. "So what do you two have planned today?"

"Well, first things first, I've gotta help my Twinny-chan out with cleaning and organizing that God-awful room of his." Hikaru said. "Then we may just bake something. Cookies or cupcakes, something fun and something made of sugar."

"Does the laundry need to be done?" Jack asked.

"That can wait till tomorrow." Yusei said. "We need detergent."

"No, I think it's the fabric softener we need." Hikaru said.

"Are you sure? That doesn't seem right to me." Yusei replied.

"Well, which one is the one with the teddy bear on it?" Hikaru asked.

"Man, it's no wonder the washing machine always overflows on us..." Yusei said.

Jack's face dead-panned. "How helpless are you two?" he asked.

"Well, Mr. I'm-A-Big-Fat-Genious-Head, do you know how to tell apart the detergent and the softener?" Hikaru asked in a teasing, mocking tone.

"The one with the teddy bear on it is the fabric softener." Jack replied. "I'd think that one is obvious."

"... How, exactly?" Hikaru asked, cocking her head to the side.

"Because teddy bears are soft." Jack said. "Any moron can figure that one out."

Yusei sweat-dropped as Hikaru remained silent. "We really have a silver spoon mentality, don't we, Onee-chan?"

It was after breakfast when Jack got dressed and slung his messenger bag over his shoulder. He made sure to bring his inhaler and umbrella, as Yusei had advised him it might rain.

"The last thing we need is you becoming bedridden again. You just got well, after all!" the younger boy had told him.

Jack made it to the cafe by quarter to eleven, and was surprised to see Carly already there, ordering their coffee. He stood beside her at the counter, pushed her hands down when they held up her wallet, and said, "I'll pay for us this time. I still owe you one anyway, remember?"

Before he knew it, they were sitting at a table near the window, and Carly was leaning on her hands and smiling at him.

"So Jack, how are things going with your new house mates?" she asked.

"Pretty good." Jack replied, setting down his cup after he took a drink. "It's so weird; I've only been living with them for a week now, but our environment feels so natural."

"It's really showing, you know." Carly responded. "How happy you've been."

Jack blinked. "It is?"

"Mm-hm." Carly nodded. "You seem so much more at peace with yourself and everyone around you... it's almost like you're back to your old self again."

"... Did..." Jack began. "Did I really change that much after Mama...?"

With a soft sigh, staring down at the table top, Carly said, "Yes." She stared down at the table top from behind her glasses and went on. "I know you must still be grieving for having lost her, but... it's seemed like there's been something missing from you for the past few months. Maybe because of your father becoming so distant... it made you so that you felt like you didn't have a family anymore." She picked up her gaze and looked at Jack now. "But nowadays, you seem to be happy and functioning on a level I haven't seen from you in a long time. It almost seems as if... you have a family again."

Jack merely stared back at her for a moment before he looked down at his coffee cup, into the depths of the blackish-brown liquid, and he smiled. "Yeah... it kinda does."

Carly smiled at him whole-heartedly. "I'm glad. You deserve one. I know that things may have never been the same ever since she passed away, but, I'm just glad you found a place where you can be happy."

'I just wish you didn't have to be so stubborn...'


Jack didn't look at the shopping list until after he'd parted ways with Carly. He then saw that Hikaru had written several lists on the same piece of paper, indicating the various stores he had to visit to get what they specifically needed.

"You did this on purpose, didn't you, Hikaru?..." he growled to himself, close to crumbling the list in his shaking hand.

'Why the hell do they need milk of magnesia, anyway?...'

Jack found it to be irritating, needing to go from place to place to get what Hikaru specifically wrote down from each store. When he got to the pharmacy, he ignored 'Tampons ;P' on the list, simply because he could tell she had put it there to make him flustered at the idea of purchasing tampons.

Despite his irritation, he counted his blessings that he could fit most of the groceries in his messenger bag so that his walk home wouldn't include lugging around heavy plastic bags that would be at risk of tearing. He even found himself to be relatively calm when it began to rain. He simply opened up his umbrella and pressed onwards.

All in all, despite how time-consuming his day was, he was glad that Hikaru had also written a little note to him at the bottom of the list.

'I gave you plenty of money, so if there's anything you want or need to get, feel free to.'

It was a little thing, but he did appreciate it.

As he walked down a sidewalk full of store fronts, he rolled around in his head what he still needed to do in his bedroom. The twins had already paid for his bed, a dresser and night stand, and he was going to order a desk on Monday. He pictured his room in his head while he walked along, imagining where he should hang picture frames and posters.

When he stopped at a cross walk to wait for the light to change, he heard a rustling from beside him. He turned his head to the right and looked down, seeing something covered up by a newspaper. Blinking, Jack leaned down and picked it up and looked beneath it. Two little fuzzy faces popped out from the deteriorating paper, and when he lifted the newspaper off of them entirely, he saw they were a pair of kittens; one brown and one white.

Jack picked his head up and looked around. There was next to nobody in sight, and no one seemed to look, care or pay attention when the little fuzzballs started to meow. He looked back down at the little things, who were looking straight up at him. He held out a hand toward them, and smiled when they rubbed their heads against it in affection. He knew then and there that the cute little creatures were trying to win him over. And that they had won.

He closed his umbrella and scooped them up into his arm. They were both so little that he only needed one to carry them in.

Hoping that the rain would soon let up, he headed back home.


On an impulse, Jack had stepped into a pet store to get the kittens food. He was happy to see the rain had turned into a drizzle, and soon enough was walking through the path in the woods back to the house.

As soon as he stepped inside, he set down the grocery bags and his umbrella and called out, "Yusei, Hikaru, tadaima! You'll never guess what I found!"

Minutes later, he was sitting in the dining room with the twins, and he set down the little kittens in front of him.

"Aw, look at them," Yusei cooed, reaching out to pet them with one of his hands. They responded positively and with purrs raking through their bodies. "Where on Earth were they?"

"Under a newspaper in the rain," Jack responded.

"Where do you think they came from?" Yusei asked.

"Who can say, there's stray cats everywhere." Jack said. "Everyone else wasn't paying attention to them. I couldn't leave them out there for dead..."

"Well, what better place to bring them than here?" Hikaru said. "Cats are attracted to Yusei."

"Are they?" Jack blinked.

"Yeah." Hikaru nodded. "He's the spirit of the cat, so his aura is like catnip to them. Likewise, rats are attracted to me. I had one for a pet when I was younger."

"And actually, our family did have a cat back in the city." Yusei said. "It'd be nice to have animals around here."

"I concur," Hikaru said, reaching out to pet the kittens as well. "Lets start brainstorming names. But right now, it's time for dinner!"

Jack made sure to set down two saucers of kitten food for the kittens to eat while the table was set.

He was surprised to see several of his favorite foods among the table when they sat down; fried riceballs with fried shrimp, stewed leeks, and baked sweet potatoes. It wasn't until all three of them said, "Itadakimasu," in unison that Yusei looked in Jack's direction.

"Jack, tonight we're celebrating." Yusei told him.

"Celebrating what?" Jack asked.

"You've been living here for a week now, and I got the idea a few days ago for us to have a welcoming party for you." Yusei replied with a small smile. "I called up Carly and her parents to ask them what some of your favorite foods are. Of course, I already knew about the leeks." His smile was soft, warm and radiant on his peach-tanned face. "Welcome home, Jack."

"And welcome to the family!" Hikaru added, holding up her glass.

With a smile on his face, Jack clinked his glass with theirs in cheers.

Their meal was filled with laughter and banter, and just when Jack thought he couldn't eat another bite, Yusei brought out a vanilla cake with blue-colored butter cream frosting. There was white icing written across the top of the cake that said, 'Welcome Home' on it.

After having a pleasant meal followed by dessert with the twins, Jack certainly felt as if he were a part of a family. And he couldn't have been happier.


To Be Continued...


Jack finding the kittens in the rain was inspired by Takano finding Sorata in Sekaiichi Hatsukoi. I really love the manga and the anime. X3

Super sorry for the long wait since the last update... T.T I lost track of time the last few weeks. Work and the holidays had me swamped...

Luckily though I recently finished chapter 18. :3 So I'm slowly getting more done!

Dunno when I'll update again though... but I thought this would be a nice surprise for the end of the year.

Happy New Year everyone, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! :3