For Hire

Part Two

" I never knew you were in so tight with the male prostitutes of the district, Koshi-kun." Sendo remarked casually the next morning as he licked some jam off his fingers and tried to appear as though his attention was on the piece of toast that he was messily smearing jam on.

" Drop it already, Sendoh, or I swear I'll bash your face in." Koshino's grip around the frying pan handle tightened. He was serious about his threat. He always was. Now if only he could make the damn idiot believe that he, a person some fifteen centimers shorter than him, give or take a few, really posed a physical threat.

" How? You can't even reach my face on tiptoe!" Sendoh pointed out with a little smirk, knowing full well how much this would annoy the guy. Koshino was incredibly sensitive about his height. Something Sendoh took constant delight in.

" Damn you to hell, Sendoh Akira!"

Sendoh held up his hand appeasingly, his usual cheerful smile firmly in place even though it was still disgustingly early in the morning in Koshino's opinion. " I was only kidding!" He informed him, giving him a hearty smack on the back and succeeding in placing a trailing smear of jam across his fresh shirt. " I just really want to know how you got on such good terms with those guys! I mean, do you just always make it a habit to walk around Kanagawa befriending every lost soul that you find?"

" Even prostitutes need friends, Sendoh. Maybe even more so..."

There was an expectant silence. After a while, Koshino finished the piece of toast that he had been gnawing on and brushed his hands clean on the sides of his pants, eventually turning his attention back to Sendoh. He continued. " As for me and Kenji, it's not what your little pervert mind thinks it is. I've never slept with the guy. I wouldn't think of it."

" He likes you." Sendo decided to state the obvious.

" Nah. He thinks he does 'cos of what I did for him a while back but I don't think he really likes me." Koshino shrugged, leaving his explanation at this since he really didn't know how else to put it.

" So what did you do for him then?"

Koshino leaned back against the counter, preparing himself for the long narrative. " It was a few years back, on our last year of High School. Coach Taoka kept us in really late at practice because the idiot captain was late, again, and got him angry." He glared at the grinning Sendoh, remembering the countless occasions that this had happened back then because of the guy seeming to have his very own private time, which usually ran an hour or so behind the standard time. " Well, so I was walking home and I decided to take a short cut. I was passing this alley when I heard someone in there moaning and crying out and asking for help. It was Kenji. The customer that he picked up that night had beaten him up so badly...God...What a sight it was..."

Sendoh couldn't imagine anyone wanting to hurt the daintily beautiful young man. He couldn't imagine anyone wanting to live the way that this Fujima and the others were. It just wasn't...right...All of them had seemed to be really decent people. He wondered about their reason for taking up such a profession. " And then what?" He pressed.

Koshino shrugged. " I couldn't just leave him there, could I? I hailed a cab and I took him to my brother's apartment since I knew that my parents wouldn't appreciate me bringing in and unconscious prostitute. I fixed him up as well as I could. After that, I just sort of made it a habit to drop by his ' territory ' once in a while. Just to check up on him. We got to be friends and since he trusted me, the others learned to also."

" Does he get beaten up a lot?" Sendoh asked quietly.

" It's a job hazard of theirs. The one that always manages to get the worst is that poor Kogure, though. That's the one that Hisashi replaced." Koshino shuddered. He had seen Kogure once after having to endure a night of punishment and it really hadn't been a pretty sight. " There's this one guy...Obsessed with him. Picks him up nearly every night just so that he can have another go at poor Kogure. I wish that there was something that I can do..."

Shaking his head, Sendoh muttered, " How the hell did those guys get into that business...They all seemed to be pretty decent people, if a little misled..."

" They are all really great guys. You just have to look past the less than reputable job of theirs. Good or bad, they do." Koshino shrugged. " I've gotten to know those guys quite well and I can tell you that they have their reasons..."

" For example?"

" Fujima's. Basically, he was just born into it. He grew up with his mom working for the same syndicate that he's working for now. He's never had an education, so what else could he do with himself? He's not the smartest guy in the world, but his face is pretty. So he decided to use that to his advantage. Hanamichi, he's got his two little brothers to take care of. His parents died before he could finish college and didn't leave them much to get by and this was the best way that he could provide for his family...Jin is pretty much alone in this world with no one else that he can rely on but himself, same thing goes for Kaede." Koshino ticked off each reason on his fingers as he recited them, " Kogure's brother forced him into it and as for your Hisashi, I've heard about what happened to him before, though I've never met him before last night. His father owed a lot to the syndicate and when he died, the responsibility of the debt was passed on to him."

Sendoh let out a slow exhalation of breath. Hearing of all of the troubles of those young men who were just about the same age as him seemed to make all of his current problems, such as how he could get to know this Hisashi better, so trivial. " I want to help them..."

" How?" Koshino demanded archly. This was the same question that he had pondered over countless of times before without coming up with a single plausible answer. " And forgive me for sounding like a bastard..."

Sendoh smirked. " You've never cared about sounding like a bastard before..." He remarked jokingly.

Koshino ignored him. " But why are you suddenly showing so much interest in them? Is it because of the whole damn situation that they're in or is it just because of that guy that caught your eye?"

" I can ask you the same thing, you know." Sendo retorted. " Why do you maintain this friendship with Kenji? He's not exactly appropriate company for the son of the President of one of the largest banks of Japan, is he? Is it out of pure good will or is there more to it than that?"

" I told you before that I've never slept with him." Koshino scowled.

" You've never slept with him, yeah. But as you said, he's a beautiful guy. There has to have been some sort of attraction between the two of you..."

" He's a prostitute."

" But what if he wasn't?" Sendoh put in questioningly. " If he wasn't, you would persue him, wouldn't you? Admit it, Koshino."

" But that's not the case, is it?" Koshino retorted, " He is a prostitute and there's no getting around that. My father took the news that I'm gay badly enough. How do you think he'll react when he finds out that I've taken it up with a call boy?"

" Things like that shouldn't matter." Sendo told him stubbornly.

" In the perfect world, it wouldn't." Koshino agreed. " But this world is less than perfect. It does matter to me...Though it does seem as though you don't give a damn about these sort of things..."

" I don't." Sendoh confirmed. " It doesn't bother me at all..."

" So does that mean you're going to try and get to know this Hisashi better?"

Sendo's customary smile had returned. " We'll just see what happens..." He replied by way of an answer.

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