Chapter 10
"So, the ad I found is racist, perverted, screwed-up and is played in between cartoons for children. What is wrong with people these days?"
"I don't think you can write that down on paper," Subaru said, as he watched the video-clip play for at least the eighteenth time on his computer.
"I'm not going to write it down anywhere."
Subaru raised his head.
"What?"
"I'm not going to report that ad," Kamui repeated and threw himself down onto the couch.
"Why not?"
"It's racist, perverted, screwed-up and played between cartoons. Isn't that abnormal?"
Kamui kicked up his legs and sprawled out, messing up his hair with a casual flick. Subaru was glad to see that he did it with his right hand.
"There are so many things abnormal in this world, Kamui, that after a while, even they become a part of normalcy."
Kamui rolled over and laid his head on the armrest to meet his eyes.
"I know that."
Subaru stared back until he realized that his arm was hanging over the keyboard and let it drop to his knees.
"What do you mean, then?"
"He put the ad in," Kamui said simply and looked around curiously, "Do you have anything I can read around here? Without the word 'Psychology' in it?"
"How would you know?"
"Because I underestimated him once and I won't do it again."
"Seishirou-san-"
"Why do you call him 'san'?"
Subaru paused in the middle of his sentence, his train of thought broken.
"After he did all that…stuff to you?" Kamui asked, politely cautious.
Subaru dropped his eyes and stared at his denim-clad legs.
"Seishirou-san," he said finally, "Is still older than me."
"Bullshit. Do you think I'll call him Seishirou-san just because he's older than me?"
"In the end, it's your choice."
"Like hell I will," Kamui continued, "I don't call you 'Subaru-san'. And you don't call me 'Kamui-kun."
"Would you like me to call you 'Kamui-chan'?" Subaru challenged.
He expected flippancy or irritation, but the actual answer surprised him.
"I'll like anything you call me," Kamui said resolutely and lay back down on his couch, "Would you happen to have any how-to-torture manuals lying around? I'm bored."
"No, I don't."
And then, because he'd missed too much of his childhood…
"Kamui-chan."
The boy just smiled knowingly. It took out the fun of the whole thing.
"Do we just wait for the next ad to come along then?" Subaru asked.
"I swear I'm going to destroy him, Subaru. I will."
Subaru said nothing.
XXX
"If someone asks about my hand, I have a…a cat. Okay?"
Subaru sighed and stared at the hacked mark in reply.
"Not believable, right?" Kamui said hopefully and looked at him, trying to widen his eyes like a baby deer. Gigantic and enticing violet orbs pleaded with him, tempting him to fall into their alluring spell.
Subaru snapped out of it and shook his head.
"That's not an excuse to miss school," he told Kamui, "And it's for your own safety."
"If you gave me some cash for every time you said that-"
Subaru slid the id card over Kamui's head as his response, but on second thought, turned it so the empty back faced the outside world, covering the name, blood type, phone number and address.
"Keep it like that as much as possible," he reminded the teenager, the way he had been doing for the past three days.
He would've liked to walk Kamui up to the school but it was much too far and he didn't think Kamui would be happy being seen with an escort.
"Subaru?"
He stopped in the process of lifting Kamui's bag off the floor to help him get it on.
"Yes?"
"What grade am I actually in?"
He stopped, completely slack-jawed and then remembered that Kamui had stopped halfway through high school and nearly slaughtered. For a moment, he wanted to call off the whole idea and keep Kamui at his side for as long as the younger boy needed the sparse protection only he could give.
He had always hated risks, gambles and bets….hated thinking of how things could go wrong and it was the reason he'd never been able to look more than five minutes before him.
The reason he was somehow more disabled than the people he met and tried to help.
"They'll assess you and assign you a class in a few more days," Subaru said firmly, more to convince himself and gave Kamui a gentle push to get him moving before either one of them lost their resolve completely.
"At least the uniform doesn't have a tie," he noted as the teenager pulled at his shirt's collar, chagrined by its mere existence.
"Do you think I'll live long enough to wear one?"
Subaru jerked at the question, his professional demeanor betraying him the way it always did around this particular teenager. He planned his answer carefully before opening his mouth.
"I intend to make sure you do."
Kamui beamed at him without warning, the almost constant nervousness leaving his face and wiping away the crippling uncertainty shadowing it as something stronger and infinitely more beautiful took its place.
"Thanks."
And he walked out the door on his own.
XXX
"Can I ask you a question?"
Subaru smiled.
"Of course. That's why I'm here."
Hokuto, would've once giggled, pleased with his reply but now, she barely took any notice. He didn't blame her. If he lived the same life as her, he wouldn't have lasted through a single day. As it was, she looked like she was in a foul mood.
It showed in her face and her disappointingly conservative style of fashion that day. The only thing that added a touch of glamour to her plain frock were the hundreds of overlapping words she'd scribbled over it in black ink, so it looked like a page of a hand-written manuscript that had been thrown into a washing machine. He could make out the words 'pain', 'hate', 'love' and 'rage' scribbled over and over again.
"What's your question, Hokuto-chan?" he asked, when her attention lapsed.
She blinked back to reality and sat up in her chair.
"I wanted to ask you," she began, unsure, "If you think its better to be a person who regrets something they did to someone that was really bad, or be a person who regretted not doing something bad to someone else."
A warped question that was born from the mind of a girl of eight. But he'd seen so many deviant things in his life that to him, it felt normal.
"You can't answer a question like that," he decided finally, "The individual case always differs and you can never guess which answer would be right and when it would be so."
He went on.
"I'm sorry. No one can answer that."
XXX
Kamui had good grammar. The things he wrote for his job were read by people more than twice his age. He needed to match up to them. With a little help and a proof-reader, he could claim to have the language skills of any adult.
So his grammar was good. He found himself helping out the boy who sat next to him in Language class. He looked a lot older than Kamui, with an overbearing presence caused by his height and his athletic build, but he seemed perfectly fine with asking Kamui with help and smiled at him and thanked him politely when he finished explaining the other's mistakes.
He introduced himself as Monou Fuuma.
He was docile in class but outside, away from the prying eyes of teachers and students with authority, he took on his real role as the sovereign of the school hierarchy, getting his way either with an impish grin or a few well-chosen words. Kamui knew that Subaru would've never approved but found himself relaxing the restraint he held over himself when the older boy was with him.
"Kamui!"
That was Fuuma, hissing at him to drag him back to the waking world. When Kamui looked at him, the other teenager pointed at the front of the class and Kamui followed the line of his finger.
His teacher was going through an essay in a notebook. The handwriting on the cover told him that it was his own and while that shouldn't have troubled him too much, the expression on the teacher's face was particularly worrying.
And more so, if Fuuma of all people had noticed.
"Shirou Kamui?" he barked and Kamui nodded as he stood, watching the advancing teacher and wondering if it was possible to shave the inside of a person's nose. If so, this man really needed to.
"Is this the essay you wrote?"
"Yes."
Some sense left in him from his nearly forgotten life in school stopped him from saying 'yeah' but forgot to remind him to use an honorific. An eyebrow twitched on the man's creased face and Kamui bit his tongue.
The man reached forward and grabbed his overturned id tag, studying it as if he were a product in a store instead of a real person and his face burned when he felt everyone else joining into their drama.
"You're a Type-H," the man said, barely hiding the scorn in his voice and that was when the part of his mind that handled honorifics voluntarily switched off.
"Yeah."
"Who wrote this essay for you?"
"I wrote it myself."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Yes."
"What's your guardian's name?"
"Sumeragi Subaru," Kamui said, wondering which of his two jobs the older man would be at. The real one, or the one where he play-acted? At least now, he knew which one was which. Or did he?
"I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you correctly," the teacher said slowly, dangerously and Kamui realized that he hadn't even bothered to learn his name.
"Sumeragi Subaru."
He didn't know he'd been slapped until he found himself colliding with the table behind him, knocking over a chair that hit his ankle as it crashed to the floor. It was only when he picked himself up, feeling a little drunk, that Kamui vaguely remembered seeing the man's hand arcing towards his cheek.
This really was happening too often.
"Sumeragi Subaru-san," the man more or less seethed in his face and something inside Kamui's head went 'oh'.
He wondered how he was going to explain the four fingers tattooed across his face to Subaru.
XXX
Hokuto looked disappointed and that stung him a little.
"I wanted a real answer," she complained and kicked the leg of her chair. One sneaker lit up while the other one stayed dark. Subaru apologized again and watched the colored lights absently, wondering how Kamui was doing in school, until she spoke again.
"I nearly forgot!" She exclaimed suddenly, "My father wants to speak to you today."
Subaru started, outwardly losing his calm for the first time ever in his career.
"I'm sorry?"
"My father. He said he'll talk to you at 11:30."
It was 11:28 am.
"Hokuto-chan, you should have told me before," he reprimanded and she smiled sheepishly.
Subaru hadn't even gotten his bearings after standing up in a hurry, his mind trying to shake itself free of the distractions that clung to it like sticky webs, when the door swung open and a man boldly walked in, stopping right before him.
"Hokuto-chan," Subaru addressed her carefully, but not taking his eyes off of her father, "Would you excuse my rudeness if I asked you to wait outside?"
Hokuto would've pouted but she seemed to sense the change in the atmosphere of the room and nodded in greeting to her father, before she swung off her chair and scurried outside, after shooting Subaru a last look of apprehension.
The man waited for the sound of her footsteps pounding down the stairs to vanish before he pulled out a cigarette and felt his pockets for a lighter.
He smiled coldly as he flicked it open with a practiced hand.
"You haven't changed at all," he said at last.
"Subaru-kun."
XXX
Author's Note:
To the people who want to kill me, this is an AU fic and I promise that with this chapter, things are falling into place so I can get the actual plot moving.
Hokuto-chan and Sei-chan as a daughter and a father. It could work. In Tokyo Babylon, Hokuto always looked up to Seishirou-san and genuinely liked him till the end. Make sense? Or do you still want to murder me? Please leave a review before you do, though.