Chapter 11
"Seishirou-san," Subaru said numbly, through lips that had turned to rubber. For a second, a tidal wave of emotions behind his face threatened to fall upon him and break the mask he had so flawlessly sculpted himself over the years but when he saw Seishirou's face, as amused and uninvolved as he remembered from being a teenager, he forced himself to nod, feeling as if a hangman's noose were around his neck, manipulating him like a puppet as he gestured to a chair.
"Please."
He waited till the older man had taken Hokuto's chair before he did. The room was back to normal. It was just another meeting between a client and a professional.
"Our interactions have mostly been indirect," Seishirou continued, as Subaru fought to keep his world from going dizzy by clutching the underside of his desk, "I was referred to you for Hokuto's treatment by an associate who was impressed by your reputation and looked into your qualifications before recommendation.
He waited for a minute, as if allowing Subaru time to say something but continued when the younger man remained silent.
"I find her progress much better than anticipated and would like to thank you for the efforts you've taken with her. I also wish to discuss the future course of the professional relationship."
He leaned back and waited.
"I see," Subaru said at last, and forced himself to sit back down, "There's no need to thank me. Hokuto-chan is a pleasure to talk to and the root of most her problems is the fact that she is deprived of attention."
Seishirou nodded, seriously deliberating the matter. Then, he spoke.
"My job does not allow me a lot of personal time myself, let alone time to indulge my daughter, but I will put your advice to practice in the future. I'll also make sure she keeps in touch with you. Do you have any other suggestions, Sumeragi-sensei?"
Subaru tried to speak but his throat was dry and his mouth was filling up with sticky saliva. He quickly excused himself and helped himself to a glass of water, focusing more on keeping the fingers wrapped around his glass steady than taking in the actual liquid.
"Hokuto-chan doesn't need people her own age," Subaru said slowly. He counted his still voice as a victory and went on.
"She needs people who can relate to the same things as her. I think that integrating her into a social group or a circle of professionals who deal with a field she likes, say fashion technology, would take her mind off things, until you can come to a compromise," Subaru said slowly.
He focused on the girl and not her father, forced himself to blur the indelible line that connected them; that was what he did to keep himself sane every time she met him during a session.
They were two different people, bound by blood. And what did that mean in the end? Nothing at all. He concentrated on that thought, encouraging it to fill up every space in his empty, empty head.
"I don't wish to take anymore of your time, then. Thank you for your consideration," Seishirou said, and Subaru noticed that he'd been taking notes with his cell phone while they spoke. He looked over them once again and then put the phone away.
"Thank you," Subaru said, swallowing hard in between to keep from choking midway.
Seishirou walked out of his office without a second glance.
XXX
It wasn't a fight. Calling it one would've been vulgar, because to Kamui, fights were ugly things on television where people rolled over each other, swore and shook fists and blood sprayed all over the place, punctuated by grunts and moans.
Fights were things where his head was slammed against the sharp edge of a desk until he was nearly unconscious and a ruler was placed against his limp hand to clinically decide the place where a realistic and potentially fatal incision would be made.
What he and Subaru were doing was not fighting. They were having a silent disagreement.
It was….well, there was no word for it. He'd have to coin one later, maybe.
"Subaru?"
The older man looked at him but his mouth was tightened and the teenager knew he was angry that he had refused to answer questions about his face. He shouldn't have been bothered but these days, Subaru was the one person he didn't want to be angry with him. And to crown it all, from the look on the older man's face, Subaru had problems of his own too.
He couldn't stand it.
He plopped himself at the Sumeragi's feet and sighed heavily.
"Subaru-san," he began sarcastically and at least that got his attention, if nothing else did.
"What did you call me?" the older man asked, as if he couldn't quite rely on his ears and Kamui was so relieved to see the anger dissipate that he spilled the rest of the story before his tongue knotted itself up again.
"Wait," Subaru gestured and slid to the floor to join him, "You mean to tell me that a teacher slapped you since you were a Type-H student and because you referred to me by name?"
Kamui was sure that the redness on his face was a color beyond the infrared spectrum but he looked at Subaru's knees and nodded, wishing his bangs were even longer.
Subaru got up and then before Kamui could tune into what was going on, the older man was getting the keys to his apartment.
"Subaru!"
He turned to Kamui, who was still on the ground and extended an arm out to him, inviting him to get up. Kamui backed away from it as if it were a pile of Uranium and Subaru sighed, but quickly hoisted Kamui to his feet before the boy could scuttle away.
"Subaru, please don't do this, he'll kill me tomorrow!"
"I'm just going to talk to him," Subaru said and pulled Kamui along to the door.
"Why can't you send a note or something?"
Subaru didn't even bother replying to that and instead, took a step towards the boy, effectively backing him up against a wall.
"Kamui," he said patiently, "Will you come with me or do I have to carry you like before?"
XXX
They talked for exactly fifteen minutes.
Kamui rocked himself back and forth on the chair he was seated on, feeling like a kindergartener in trouble for throwing sand.
He jumped when the door swung open and Subaru stepped out first, casually walking past Kamui as if he didn't exist. His teacher followed and stopped before and Kamui stood up.
"Shirou-kun," he said tersely, staring down at the teenager, "I am not a particularly intimidating person and wouldn't like you to think so either."
Kamui wondered what to do and tried to catch Subaru's eye but the older man was determinedly staring into another direction.
"However, I do have several steadfast principles and one of them includes my emphasis on propriety. Honorifics are a vital part of any interaction and show a person their place when addressing someone superior to them. Do you understand me, Shirou-kun?"
Kamui murmured an answer, making sure it was too blurred to recognize anything in it, honorific or not.
"I explained this to your guardian and I'm afraid that we weren't able to reach a suitable compromise. I, however, enjoyed having gotten the privilege to meet an eminent member of our society, such as Sumeragi Subaru-sensei, despite our varying views."
Kamui idly scraped his teeth over his tongue and waited.
"The decision now rests with you. No concessions will be made for you in the future regarding this matter and I want to make that clear."
"Thank you," Kamui said stiffly, feeling as if the world had abandoned him.
"Kamui-san!"
He jumped at having been addressed so and looked around.
And saw Subaru with his arms crossed, waiting for him by the door, looking at him expectantly.
"We need to get home before it's dark, Kamui-san," he repeated, stressing on the last phrase and Kamui gaped.
"Subaru?" he said aloud, quietly.
The expression of dumb-founded horror on his teacher's face.
Amazement stretching across his own.
Amusement on the twenty-five-year-old's face.
Kamui shoved past his teacher and running to Subaru, he flung his arms around the older man's waist, hugging him hard and grinning into his shirt. Subaru fondly flicked some hair off the top of his head and they both walked out together, trying to suppress their bubbling laughter.
XXX
"I have trouble finding a word for something."
"Tell me the situation."
"The advertisement is about this gel-based soap and basically, the ad indirectly encourages people to spy on people having a shower. While they're naked."
Subaru wondered whether to point out that most people who had a shower were naked when they did so and there was no need to mention that specifically but decided to let it drop. He voiced out another thought as he stared at the dark head focused on the multiple sheets and forms spread out before them.
"The word you need is Voyeurism. And by some chance, do you mean that unsightly blue bar that looks like it's been completely made out of sparkles?"
Kamui's head bobbed up and he grinned.
"How did you know?"
Subaru laughed dryly.
"That soap came out for the first time when I was seventeen. I'm pretty sure I was the second person on the planet to see the first ad for it."
When Kamui dropped his pen and looked up, Subaru knew that he had let out more than he needed to.
"How did you do that?" he asked, staring up at the Sumeragi.
Subaru shrugged.
"I was with someone at the time and they had a really good television," he said simply. It was a fact only known to him; easy to miss and ambiguous. Lucky, that was enough to sidetrack him.
"You didn't have television back then?"
Subaru wouldn't have been surprised if the teenager burst into tears, from the sound of his strangled voice.
"Worse things have happened to me, Kamui," he reminded him and Kamui looked down at the complaint forms and the half-filled reports, written with his recovering hand.
"Will you check my work after dinner?"
Subaru caught the childish plea in the sentence and got up to go and create the currently non-existent dinner that Kamui was too bashful to outwardly ask for. The teenager resumed his work and the first thing he did was to write his full name in a bold font across the top margin of the front page and wait for the inevitable lecture that was sure to follow.
Instead, as Subaru moved to leave, he quickly wrapped an arm around the boy from behind, pulling Kamui back against himself so soft hair brushed his cheek and hugged him hard.
"I'm proud of you," Subaru said quietly and left him there.
Kamui self-consciously pulled his shirt down and flushed.
It was a whole ten minutes before he got back to work.
XXX
Author's Note:
I wanted a fluffy Subaru/Kamui chapter so this is what you get. As for Subaru calling Kamui with a '-san' at the end, it sounds like something he would do to prove a point. And if you think about it, Kamui is superior to him in terms of power in X.
And that last scene by the way, is a subtle reference to Tokyo Babylon. Anyone care to correctly identify which volume it's from?
Please read and review. Things will be getting darker and interesting soon, in my opinion. We crossed the half-way point just a chapter or two ago.