GRAVITY WALK

10

Knock knock.

"Ani!"

Wha…? Who—

"Ryoga!"

—Ahh. Right.

God.

It's 7AM and there's banging at the door, and Kaito opens his eyes and doesn't know where he is—until he does. The sun's just creeping in through the blinds in the alcove (really) of Shark Kamishiro's room, where Kaito's curled up in bed and Shark's still curled up on the floor from when Kaito pushed him the night before, and Shark's twin sister is at the door, demanding that her smashed brother wake up before their parents get home.

Shark doesn't stir; Kaito rubs at his eyes and sits, blinking in the morning light. He didn't get a look at Shark's room yesterday—or if he did, it wasn't a particularly good one—but now in his sobriety he can notice all the posters and the absurdly huge plasma screen and the—really—recording booth in the corner, and—

"Oh my god, RYOGA! You're the most useless older brother on the planet!"

Thiiiis isn't the time to be thinking about Shark's room's set up.

"I don't know why Mama and Papa don't—"

Kaito opens the door.

"—kick… you… oh my god."

"Hi," says Kaito, sweating in his, um, sweater, with the jacket thrown over his shoulder. "I'm just gonna. Go."

Rio opens her mouth to say something clever, he thinks, but what comes out instead is, "I can't believe this." A pause, and then: "You?"

"Bye," he says, and makes to leave, but she blocks him.

"Did you—"

"No. No."

And he's gone.

Kaito Tenjo is a piece of shit.

He's a piece of shit because last night he told Haruto he'd be home "later," but he didn't say that "later" meant the next morning (because he didn't know it meant the next morning, thanks, and he didn't know that Shark was good at the thing with his mouth, either), and when he pushes open the front door and shuts it closed behind him, who does he find but his dad—who presumably had to work from home in Kaito's absence, lest Haruto be left alone.

"Kite," starts Faker, to which Kaito thinks, "No," but says, "...Morning," and trudges upstairs before the old man can say anything.

Haruto, at least, doesn't know that Kaito was gone so long. From what Kaito pieces together, his little brother fell asleep on the sofa in anticipation of Kaito's return, was carried to bed, and only wakes up an hour after Kaito's return. They sort Haruto's candy—a yield more impressive than ever before—while Faker hovers in the kitchen, and Kaito tries to act normal.

"How was the party?" Haruto asks.

Kaito's not sure how much he wants to admit it.

"Nice," he says, finally.

When school starts up two days after Halloween, Kaito fully expects Shark not to talk him; maybe even to have packed up his posters and his recording booth and moved out of town, his face red from the alcohol and red from the embarrassment, because, Kaito thinks, if he'd been so drunk because his crush ditched him, if in his desperation he'd made out with Shark and then cuddled the crap out of him, Kaito'd have to change his name (as it stands, Kaito was the object of cuddling and he doesn't really have a reputation like Shark's, so Kaito's not anywhere near as embarrassed as he could be, even if No One Must Know).

But what actually happens is entirely different. Rather than despise the very air that Kaito dares to occupy, Shark, having recovered from the day before's killer hangover, seems to have absolutely no recollection of what transpired the night prior, and, actually? Is in a really good mood. He doesn't scowl at Kaito as much, and doesn't move his desk three inches over when Kaito sits down at English, basically warms up to Kaito in general, which. Um.

This is unnatural.

In English, Rio catches Kaito's eye when he's looking desperately in her direction for an answer; when Shark leaves before either of them after class, she walks over and explains, rolling her eyes, "He said he had a good dream but he can't remember what it is. I think he thinks Yuma was in it." Then she picks up her bag and leaves, and Kaito's life continues to be a cosmic joke, but at least he knows that Shark Kamishiro doesn't have a crush on him. Hopefully.

It's just that they're actually friends now, not through Yuma but through each other, which, y'know, isn't bad.

(Plus Kaito totally saw the poster for BENETNASCH behind Shark's door and googled and Know Your Meme'd it yesterday and can you say "blackmail material"?)

Presently, they're outside for lunch and Yuma pulls out a paper bag alongside his usual bento and pours out the contents, all kinds of candy and chocolate spilling onto the ground and Kaito and Shark staring at it as Yuma shakes out even more, and endless stream of sugary goodness. "This," Yuma says, looking either of them sternly in the eye, like he's the principal and they're rowdy middle schoolers in his office, "is what happens when you go trick-or-treating with me."

"Mhm." Kaito nods, takes one of Yuma's Three Musketeers, peels back the wrapper, and plops it in his mouth. Shark is more outraged at this than Yuma, who sighs and pushes the pile in Shark's direction for him to choose a treasure from the bounty, all of their actual lunches left forgotten.

"Oh, hey! Kaito hasn't thanked me about Halloween yet!"

"I haven't?" Kaito asks, to which Yuma shakes his head and crosses his arms, expectant. "Thanks for taking Haruto out, Yuma."

"Not that," says Yuma, waving his hand dismissively, like, come on, Kaito, stop kidding around, and the way he grins and folds his hands then can only be described as cartoonish—Kaito can practically see the gleeful sparkles shimmering in Yuma's eyes when he asks, "You had fun at Ryoga's gig, riiiiiight?"

Kaito glances at Shark, who hasn't reacted — so, wow, he really doesn't remember, and Rio really didn't tell him, and he probably thinks that Kaito showed up and snarked at him and left. Which, you know, Kaito is totally okay with.

"Sure," says Kaito, biting back his smirk. "Shark's quite talented."

That satisfies Yuma, and the party isn't mentioned again. Instead, Yuma tells them how his night with Haruto went, so Kaito gets to hear the story about the aggressive pirate dad all over again, and this time the man is just a little shorter in stature and the candy received isn't as good, but it's still a funny story and pretty soon all three of them are cackling. Thing is, what Haruto left out of his retelling Yuma slips in by accident—the part where Haruto got kind of tired and Yuma got kind of tired, too, and the second Kaito hears that his face slips into a frown and Yuma waves his arms frantically, about how he doesn't have to worry because they stopped at Kotori's house to rest for a bit before they went home.

"We took pictures," Yuma remembers suddenly, and looks wildly around for his phone, which disappeared earlier under the mountain of junk food. "Lemme send 'em to you."

"No phone," Kaito reminds them, and Yuma groans.

"Still?"

"Not like I'd use it much."

"What do you even do all day, Kaito?"

"I…"

That's… a pretty good question. After school, Kaito goes home and he eats the tiniest bit and then he checks if he's at any risk of going into a coma or whatever before collapsing on the couch for a nap. Haruto usually wakes him up an hour later and they watch some TV together and Kaito helps Haruto with his homework while staring blankly at his own. Kaito ends up making dinner and eating right before his dad gets home, at which point he makes his escape with the excuse of assignments due tomorrow, but actually just lies in bed and stares at the ceiling or plays Pokémon or something. Thus accomplishing absolutely nothing of value each day, Kaito accomplishes absolutely nothing of value each night, either, gets ready for bed and eyes the mess that is his room, thinks I should probably clean this tomorrow, and then doesn't.

So. What does he do all day?

"...Nothing, really."

"Kaito." Yuma puts a hand on Kaito's arm solemnly. "I think you need an intervention."

Kaito draws himself back. "Do I?"

"You do," presses Yuma, nodding to add effect. "And it starts with us finding your phone."

"Before you turn into a total hermit," adds Shark, whose concern is… sweet?

?

?

"I don't even have a texting plan," Kaito says. "Even if I did find it, what's gonna happen? D'you two plan on calling me to talk about your crushes in the middle of the night?"

He neglects to include 'on each other,' but the effect on Shark is as if he had. Good.

"I didn't know you were such a dirty gossip," Shark remarks.

"Didn't I tell you? I run the school's gossip magazine."

"Guys?"

"Don't run bullshit about my sister and Shitgetsu."

"Guys…"

"You actually read it?"

"Guys!" shouts Yuma, waving his arms around in front of their faces, "You're doing the thing again."

That shuts them both up. Yuma's yet to tell them what exactly The Thing is—although in light of the weekend's events, Kaito can wager, um, a guess—but neither of them are particularly keen on the subject since it involves the other.

"Anyway," says Yuma, rubbing his hands together, "I know what we're gonna do on Saturday."

"I can't—"

"No bailing, Kaito!"

"I have to—"

"You either, Ryoga."

They both cross their arms and sigh.

"I think the most exciting adventure that we can have right now is…."

"...Cleaning Kaito's room."

"This," says Shark, who arrived before Yuma and tried to play it down by loitering down the street, but failed when Haruto noticed him from the window and pointed it out to Kaito, "is the messiest dump I have ever seen in my life."

"Some of us," says Kaito, who agrees but can't admit that aloud because that would be agreeing with Shark, and he can't have that, "have more important things to focus on then keeping their room germ-free in case it might disgust their classmate."

"Like this?" asks Shark, and before Kaito can turn to him, before he can even register that Shark's picked something up from his desk and oh god it's that something, that specific something that should not be something but is totally something, the notebook with the galaxies on the cover and the burned out stars inside, "Don't—"

Shark reads:

Here comes the Monster—
more Savage than a Supernova!
with the CATACLYSMIC FORCE
of TENBLACKHOLES put together.
a cosmic SCOURGE that
VAPORIZES
every thing
in its path

O
Radiant
Galaxy
that lurks
in the
darkness.
become
the Striking Light
of hope
and
of servitude.
descend!
here and now,
onto
me.

Slowly, Shark lowers the notebook.

A beat.

"Kaito."

Kaito keeps the eye contact. Shark tries, but it looks like he's going to piss himself laughing, so it's kind of difficult. If Kaito needed a picture to describe "shit-eating grin"...

"Shark."

"You."

"Me."

"Write poetry."

"I—"

"And that's why you don't hang out with us."

"That's," says Kaito, and wants to say that it is really old, but wonders what exactly the definition of "old" would be here, considering that it's from this year, just like everything else in that stupid freewriting diary of his, just like the letters to Chris and the letters to his mom, just like the responses to summer reading and hospital visits and everything else that he thought'd be a good idea to counter depression—

"Oh my god," says Shark, wiping an invisible tear from his eye, except oh my god it's not even invisible, Shark is legitimately crying, and Kaito tries not to look embarrassed because god dammit he's not embarrassed except that he's totally embarrassed, and Shark turns the page, and Kaito hopes to god that Shark can't read his dumb katakana—"Kurisu he"—god DAMMIT.

"To Chris," translates Shark, nodding like he understands. "Who's Chris? Your boyfriend?"

"No."

"Girlfriend?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"Chris," says Kaito evenly, grasping at the strings that might finally pull Shark and him down to equal ground, "is as much my boyfriend as Yuma is yours."

Which says a lot—says that if Shark has a crush on Yuma, then Kaito has one on Chris, which Shark will figure out once he reads maybe half a sentence on the page to which he's turned. But here's the thing: as obvious as it is, Shark'll never admit he has a crush on Yuma, so Kaito doesn't have a crush, either.

Of course, Shark knows that Kaito knows about Shark's crush, so now Kaito knows that Shark knows about Kaito's crush, which is a roundabout way of give one to get one, but—

It's a strategic move.

"So not at all," surmises Shark, placing the book back on Kaito's desk.

"Not at all," agrees Kaito, and they shake on it.

They both jump when the doorbell rings seconds later and Haruto calls up, "Niisan!" Kaito shouts back that he'll get it and heads on over to open the door for Yuma; he expects Shark to follow him out of his room and come to greet their friend, but that doesn't happen and Kaito mutters fun little curses under his breath because wow does he not want Shark in his room alone after that, and wow does he have more embarrassing things in there and wow does he not want Shark to be the one to find them, tacit agreement to hide each other's embarrassments or not.

So much for that blackmail.

Yuma's already inside when Kaito goes to get him; Faker ended up opening the door and letting him in, and Yuma, one hand holding tight to the strings of his drawstring, is having what looks like an actual decent conversation when Kaito stops halfway down the stairs and calls his name.

"Hey," Kaito says, waving him over. "C'mon up, Shark's already going through my stuff."

So Yuma thanks Faker and comes up and Kaito slams his door open, welcoming Yuma to his, uh, humble? abode. It greets them with five different piles of laundry and about seven piles of papers and books, hair brushes and hair gel and hair dye and towels by his mirror, which could use some Windex because when Kaito looks into it, he might as well be looking into a fog. There's two or three boxes of comic books and video games, and two more filled with all the wires that come with all the systems that used to be hooked up to the TV but aren't any longer, tangled up together no matter how much care Kaito took when originally putting them in. His closet is wide open and his clothes are sliding off the hangers, his drawers are pulled out and they're either overflowing with stuff he's thrown this way or that or full of his stupid collections of Duel Monsters cards and other things from childhood he's yet to throw away; on his nightstand, there's a single lamp flanked by three bottles of water and five imprints from glasses, because Kaito lost his coaster.

"Wow," says Yuma, because seeing is believing.

Kaito doesn't say "I told you so"; he's watching Shark, who's going through a box of Kaito's games.

"Final Fantasy VII? Really?"

Kaito snatches it from Shark's hands, and slips it into a drawer on his nightstand. "Yeah, really. It's worth about one-hundred and ten more dollars than you."

"So you're saying I'm priceless."

"I'm saying no one would want to buy you if I put you on eBay."

"You were considering pimping me?"

"Hi, Ryoga!" says Yuma, before that conversation can carry on, and Kaito has the distinct feeling that they were doing the thing again. "Hey, Yuma," replies Shark, who's in an even better mood today than he was on Tuesday, so either the stick perpetually up his butt has taken the day off work, or Shark's given it a vacation since he saw Kaito's stupid poetry. "'Sup?"

"Stars," points out Yuma, who's noticed Kaito's ceiling. Shark follows Yuma's gaze up to the roof, where Kaito maybe sorta kinda okay fine yeah has those plastic, neon glow-in-the-dark stars hung in pinks and blues and that weird light-greenish color, old and stuck to the pasty white paint with the little gum. There's little glow-in-the-dark planets, too; and maybe Shark and Yuma won't notice but it's all actually accurate, as much of the night sky and its constellations that Kaito can set up, there's Ursa Major and Dubhe and Alkaid, Phecda and Megrez and Merak and Alioth. Mizar and Alcor.

Kaito expects a snark, a comment, something stupid, readies himself to come up with a good snappy response, but instead of anything dumb, Shark just says, "Whoa."

"Yeah… well… uh, better get to work."

So while his friends are marveling at something that's lost its charm for him, Kaito starts picking things up… and then puts them down again, stares blankly at the sea of junk that they have to sort through and thinking about how hopeless it is for them to get this done in a day—or to get it done at all.

Something comes flying at his face. "Hey," says Shark who's taken to stacking Kaito's games in a box he's emptied, "no slacking off."

Kaito grunts in response and resumes collecting his socks—until Shark's turned away, and Kaito bundles five socks into a ball and throws them at Shark's back.

So it's on.

Basically? They make Kaito's room much, much worse than before. What was scattered piles of junk ends up being a storm of crap in every corner, a carpet that Kaito no longer remembers the color of, and three teenage boys (but mostly Shark and Kaito) fighting, ducking for cover behind Yuma when they can, and then being betrayed by their own ally. Flying socks and wires and Star Wars underwear, pillows and sheets and basically anything that presumably won't cause blunt force trauma. They only stop when Kaito grips around idly for something under the bed to ricochet off the wall and land on Shark's head, and ends up grabbing something solid of which he recognizes the shape. Kaito's eyes widen as he withdraws and stares at his Nokia, the old blue and grey thing with barely a caller ID and the keyboard that uses T9.

"Hey, what's that?"

"I… found it," says Kaito, and presses the power button, although he's sure that the battery's long past dead. Still, it is a Nokia…

The black screen glints with a lightning bolt. It still works. Needs juice…

"Should I throw things at you again? Do you think I'll accidentally hit you with the charger?"

"No," says Kaito. "I know where that is."

Yuma looks around the room, where nothing is where it once was and probably never will be again. "Really?"

Kaito nods. He wades through the piles of video games that fell when Yuma tripped over the box and all his clothes and his papers and his books and his comics—including that one that Shark totally ripped and Kaito would get mad if he cared at all for the New 52 so much—and goes to his nightstand, where the lonely lamp still guards his diary. He pulls open the drawer, the only kept neat and organized, and Yuma and Shark peer over his shoulders.

This is the drawer with all the stuff that matters. This is where Kaito keeps his keys and his wallets and his notebook, a pencil and an eraser and a pen. His medicine, his glucometer. Three copies of Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon (there was one more, a piece of his heart that kept him up when he was down, the last birthday present he got from his mom: the card he gave to Yuma). The picture that he stole from his dad's office. A few pieces of caramel. And one charger, which he knew he would need later, so kept it there for safe-keeping.

Kaito plugs his phone into the same outlet as the lamp and lets it sit. When he glances back, Yuma's taking a better look into the drawer, which Kaito probably should've shut.

"Kaito, whoa..."

"What is it?" He hopes this isn't about the picture.

"Those… Galaxy-Eyes, you, I mean…"

"Three, yeah. So it was okay for you to keep one."

"Do you have a full deck?"

"I don't play."

"But," presses Yuma, "you do have a deck?"

"No, I don't have a deck, because I don't play." He pushes the drawer shut and stands in front of it like a guard. "Why would I have a deck for a game I don't play?"

"But you could make a deck," Yuma insists, staring at him meaningfully. "You have all the cards and stuff you need right here in your room?"

"Yeah, but..."

"C'mon, Kaito," says Shark, who's snapped back to attention since Kaito shut the drawer again. "You've got, like, half the first two generations in here. Forgot how to build or something? Want me to make a deck for you? Photons are pathetic, right, same combo every time?"

Kaito realizes that he's being bullied and peer pressured by a fifteen- and a sixteen-year-old, one with a big dumb grin and the other with a big stupid smirk, but there's something about the way that Shark says that, the way that he disses Photons that resonates within him, reminds him of a boy sitting on the floor opposite him at New Year's parties, reminds him of a woman with a smile that dimpled on her right cheek just like Haruto's, reminds him of her challenging him and beating him every time, come on, Niisan, how are you going to save your baby brother from the champion like that?, and Kaito pulls open his drawer so hard it almost falls out, swipes up his three Galaxy-Eyes and the deck that's still perfectly in-tact inside its deck box—because he'd found it earlier and didn't want it thrown around—and holds it up like a badge.

"I don't need your help."

"Pants on fire," decides Shark.

"Good," says Yuma, grinning, and he pulls the drawstring bag off his back. "Because I have mine."

"And some of us talk outside of school, too," says Shark, (un)coolly, and magically manages to get a deck box to appear in his hand, too.

"Triangle?"

"I don't know, Kaito, do you still remember how to play?"

"2v1 then, right, Yuma?"

Yuma grins. "Let's all kattobingu!"

Kaito forgot how to play.

Like, hey, no—he remembers the rules, okay, but he doesn't remember how his deck works, because he forgot that his Photon deck is also a Galaxy deck, he forgot how to swarm with it; he forgot how to summon GEPD, and he forgot when he retains ATK boosts and when he doesn't. Galaxy Knight, he decides, is annoying; it loses its attack on a Tribute-less normal summon regardless of fetching a GEPD—which, stupid.

At least Galaxy Knight's level 8, because that makes it good NGEPD fodder. Except that when Kaito does that, he forgets that Yuma has a Hope out on his field, and Hope loses his units, which they were planning on using for defense later.

Basically, Kaito totally screws up their entire game.

"I remember this game being less absurdly complicated," Kaito mutters.

"You remembered wrong," says Shark, and he motions for Yuma to switch seats with him. "Play again?"

And they do, again and again until they've hit all possible combinations and Kaito has lost the maximum number of times, because it's not about winning. There was this pull when they started that made Kaito frown at first, but now he gets it. It's the same rush that he used to know as a kid, the feel of addiction and of wanting to be better and wanting to be the best, the feel of… well, as stupid as it sounds, strengthening bonds between friends that the anime still raves about all the time. Maybe it's a placebo, maybe it's bonding over the dumb, ridiculously complicated rules that require googling card erata and rulings too often; maybe it's the way Yuma and Shark and Kaito keep disagreeing on the chain order. Whatever it is, it's nice.

Kaito's room doesn't get cleaned that day. Not entirely, anyway; when Yuma and Shark leave and Kaito's voice is hoarse from laughing and his face is tired from smiling, he goes upstairs and looks at the mess and, yeah, okay, he can't let this one slide by. His sides ache but his mood is okay, and Kaito picks up some of his things. Shuffles his comics into a box (even the one that Shark ripped), draws up his clothes and puts them all together in a corner. Makes a little pathway to his closet, where he rips all his things off the hangers and throws them in the pile, too. Stuffs the box inside his closet. Nods at it, and closes the door. One thing at a time. Underwear in underwear drawer, not exactly neatly, but in it. Same for his socks. Unpaired, but together.

When he's tired, he climbs onto his bed and closes his eyes for a second before staring at the stars on his ceiling. His bed is more comfortable today than he remembers it being, but everything today is more comfortable and more bright, and maybe things aren't so bad, you know? Kattobingu da, Yuma said, and Kaito still hasn't asked him what it means (mostly because he doesn't want to face the embarrassment if it's a common word, though it doesn't sound like one, is it just a new noun form of "ganbaru"?), but… Kaito can feel that word butterfly around him.

Today he is happy.

Right after he realizes that, his phone turns on, vibrating in a soft purr to let him know that it's awake, that it's back in business. Kaito realizes suddenly that he hasn't even exchanged numbers with Yuma and Shark yet, but the venture was successful, at least, and he can do that on Monday. Haruto'll be happy to hear tomorrow, at least.

Kaito yawns, pulls up his blanket, and closes his eyes to sleep.

But then his phone vibrates again. And again. And again.

Huh. Probably Yu—

—No, it can't be him. So who...?

Kaito reaches for the phone, his heart pounding as he remembers something.

"You know you'll save money if you just get the plan, right?" "Shut up."

Kaito has 62 messages. They're all from Chris.