A/N: Oh gosh, I didn't like the way this chapter came out. It's too similar to the book. Argh. . .

Chapter Seven: In Which Takeru Learns The Truth

Later that same day, after we had finished breakfast and gone to school, I sat in my homeroom class. I was trying hard not to think about everything I'd been told that morning. I didn't want to sit there and puzzle over it for the entire hour. I especially didn't want to think about it because, two rows over and one seat in front of me, there sat the one person that I had been puzzling about. I stared at the back of his violet-indigo head for awhile, half-wanting him to turn around and meet my eye and smile at me, so I'd know everything will be alright, and half-wanting to not get caught, so I wouldn't have to look into those eyes and see any truths I didn't want to see.

The story seemed to have gotten around the school already, because the guys sitting in the back row kept saying rude things to Ken all morning.

"Hey, Ichijouji," I heard one call, not loud enough to be heard by the teacher, but loud enough so Ken could hear him clearly, "blow me."

He laughed with his friends, but they shut up when Ken turned around to face them, staring hard into the eyes of the guy that had spoken to him. The guy stared right back, face set hard. I tried to keep from laughing because I knew what Ken was up to; the guy would not be able to hold his gaze for that long with Ken, because it's some sort of a rule that you do not stare into the eyes of a guy you and your friends suspect is gay, but if he looked away, he would lose the game. It surprised me a little that I'd been around Ken long enough to know when he was tricking someone with that quick, witty mind of his. Sure enough, the guy looked down, and Ken turned back around with a satisfied smirk. Not once did he glance over at me, and when the bell rang and he didn't wait for me or look at me, I breathed a sigh of relief, walking out of the classroom among the throng of kids wanting to get home already.

~ ~ ~ ~

I stared at the doorbell I was about to ring. Ever since earlier that day, when my friends had told me about Ken and Yukio, I'd been itching to hear his side of the story. I knew that his story wouldn't confuse me as much, since he speaks so clearly and doesn't talk bull about anything. Now that I was here, though, I was starting to have my doubts. What if his story was completely different and only confused me even more? What if I would end up having to pick sides, and what if I picked the wrong one?

I forced myself to ring the doorbell and shifted nervously on my feet as I waited for it to open. Soon, Ken's mom opened the door with a smile.

"Hello, Takeru. It's nice to see you again. How have you been?"

"It's nice to see you, too. I've been good." I stepped into the house, looking around uncertainly before letting my eyes trail up the stairs. "Is Ken home?"

"He's in his room, honey," she said as she walked back to the couch, waving her hand at the stairs. "Go ahead."

I didn't need any more of a push than that. I sprinted up the stairs and practically ran to his room, but I stopped in my tracks when I saw his door was open.

Ken sat on his bedroom floor, staring at his phone receiver, as if confused. He shook his head slightly and hung it up, reaching both hands up to drag down his face. He looked tired.

"Ken?"

He made cracks with his fingers, looking at me through them. "Hey, Takeru."

He let his face go and shifted over on the floor as I walked to his bed and sat on it. He lifted himself up and sat on the bed next to me. His eyes were moving from side to side and he looked distracted, as if he were trying to figure something out.

"Something wrong?"

The phone rang and Ken sighed before leaning down to lift the entire thing onto his bed. He lifted the receiver to his ear.

"Hello?. . .uh, yeah. . .uh, no."

He hung up and moved the phone away so it wasn't in between us. He shook his head and seemed to force his attention back onto me.

"So, how have you been? Eaten lately? Thrown up lately?"

"Not as much as usual. That goes for both questions, by the way," I said, wondering what the phone call was about.

"Good, good," he said, nodding his head and staring at the bedsheets. He remained quiet, and I didn't know what to say to him, so there was silence for a while.

The phone rang again.

This time, he lifted the receiver and hung it up again right away. I turned to stare at it, raising an eyebrow.

"What's with the frequent phone calls?"

"Never mind that. So, we were talking about you."

The phone rang yet again. He sighed and lifted the receiver. His face suddenly grew bright and animated.

"Well, blimey, if it isn't me great aunt Marcie! How the hell are you? So sorry, have to go, give the kids my love!"

He slammed the phone down. I stared at him, bewildered. He rubbed his face again and then looked at me wearily.

"Sorry. I can't concentrate right now. This isn't a very good time to be visiting me. Could you leave and come back later? It'll be a better time for talking then."

"Well, I'm not leaving."

He snorted in a sort of short laugh and turned to look at me.

"I'm guessing you came over here to learn about last night."

I was surprised at the change in topic, but I squirmed a little at his being so blunt about it. However, by this time, I'd figured Ken wasn't the type to beat around the bush.

"Yeah," I admitted quietly.

He looked up at the ceiling, sighing. "Well, sorry, can't help you there."

"What?"

I stared at him. What did he mean "can't help you there"?

"I never defend my actions," he said, still staring at the ceiling.

"Hikari said you were flirting with Yukio," I told him, to see what kind of reaction it would get.

"Huh, imagine that," he said, his face betraying no emotion, still staring at the ceiling.

I started feeling frustrated. "If you don't tell me your side of the story, I'll have no choice but to believe what they told me!"

"Believe whatever you want, Takeru," Ken replied calmly. "I trust you enough to know what to believe."

This only got me even more confused. "Well what if I have absolutely no freaking idea what to believe?"

"Then I suppose that's your problem."

"But the story they told me is so weird, I can't help but not believe it, and I need to know the truth."

"That's good, Takeru. That's good that you don't believe everything you hear," he snapped.

"Why won't you tell me what happened?" I asked, exasperated with him.

"Do you know what a convenient recollection is?"

I was tired of his changing subjects, but I played along anyways, knowing this had to be relevant to what we were talking about.

"No, I don't, but I'm sure you'll tell me."

"A convenient recollection is a memory that a person recalls inaccurately, to unconsciously protect from guilt, anxiety, or unwanted associations."

"Okay," I said slowly, nodding. I waited for him to tell me where this came in.

My eyes suddenly widened as it dawned at me. "So you're telling me my friends had-"

"I'm not telling you anything, Takeru," he cut in. He lay down flat against the bed, reaching a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose like he did when he was trying to calm down or concentrate.

I began telling him the entire story about what my friends said happened the previous night. He listened, staying quiet, keeping his eyes closed, still pinching his nose. When I was done, he turned to look at me, actually looking interested.

"Smoke rings," he repeated. I deflated when I realized that was the only thing he seemed to have taken in.

"Yeah, she said you said blowing smoke rings was a gay thing."

His eyebrows shot up and he rubbed his forehead, and I guessed he expected me to think of the smoke rings part as a convenient recollection.

"Look, I'm tired, and I need sleep. If you don't need anything, could you leave and talk to me later on?"

I realized I'd been keeping him up. I remembered him politely asking me to leave earlier in the conversation, and I noticed the dark rings under his eyes. People had probably been calling him to hassle him all night long, if they'd heard about what had happened.

"Okay then, but I'm walking off assuming what they said is right."

"Of course," he said, his hands covering his face.

"I guess you must have just not known what you were talking about last night."

"That must be it," he said in a weird singsong voice, shrugging.

I walked to his door, still staring back at him, waiting for him to call me back. He didn't.

"You asked Yukio for sex because he was blowing smoke rings."

"Yup, I'm just a mad rapist," he replied, and I knew how crazy that sounded.

The phone rang yet again.

"I'll just let my mom pick it up. Maybe he'll stop calling if she does."

"Who?"

It rang again. Ken looked at the door. "Is my mom home? Maybe she went out somewhere."

"What the hell is that all about?" I asked, pointing at the phone.

He shook his head, staring at it. He looked away from it. He obviously didn't want me to know. This only heightened my curiosity.

"Come on, Ken, you know you can tell me."

"Yeah, I know I can, but I don't think you'd want to know."

"Why not?"

"Believe me, you don't want to hear what's on the other end of that phone."

"Oh, believe me, I do."

He studied me for awhile, arms crossed over his chest, and then sighed.

"Fine, you can pick it up, but you had better not blame me for ruining your life."

The phone rang a third time. I looked at it, and he looked at me. I couldn't contain myself after it rang a second time and I picked it up.

"Hello?"

At first, I couldn't hear a thing. I thought maybe they were just calling and not saying anything. I was about to hang up when I realized I could hear breathing. There was something odd about the breathing, though. It seemed to be quick, short breathing. Suddenly, all of these words and sentences were thrown at me, words that I'd hardly ever heard in my life, and never directed at me; words that made me blush and feel disgusted. The only words that were muttered that are fit to be put here in print were, "You're mine, Marcie."

I hung up as quickly as I could, my face contorted in disgust, my hand over my mouth. I sat back down onto his bed.

"Don't blame me for ruining your life," Ken said again.

As if such a thing could completely ruin my entire life.

"What the hell was that?" I asked incredulously.

"Don't tell me you've never heard of phone sex," Ken said bluntly.

My eyes widened. "You were-"

"Did it look to you like I was having phone sex?!" he asked irritably.

No, he hadn't. I felt my face blush and I looked away.

"Who in the world is calling you for phone sex? I mean, what kind of sicko does something like that?"

He narrowed his eyes at me, and even I heard the laughter in my voice.

"I'm so glad this amuses you so much."

"Sorry, it's just so freaky." I couldn't help but smile and wonder who the heck this guy was. "Don't you want to find out who it is?"

"I know who it is," he grumbled, turning over to face the wall.

My eyebrows shot up. "You do? Who is it? How do you know who it is?"

He remained silent, staring at the wall.

"Did he say his name? Or send you a love note or something?"

"Takeru, I'm not stupid. I hit star sixty-nine."

Then, I felt stupid. I laughed again, but quietly. "Whoever it is, he's a moron. Didn't he think of the ways it can be traced back to him? Star sixty-nine, caller ID. . ."

"I don't think he cares that I know," Ken replied. "I think he wants me to know who he is. He wants me to be scared of him. He probably thinks I'm sitting here, shaking in my little pink fuzzy slippers."

I gave his black army boots a pointed look.

"Can't you call the cops on him?"

"Wouldn't be worth what I would have to deal with afterwards."

"Ken, you're making him sound like some big enormous brute."

I guess, like anyone would, I got the stereotype in my head that some puny, feminine guy was the one calling. I wasn't prepared for the shock I would receive upon dialing star sixty-nine.

It was Yukio and Akito's phone number. I knew Akito wasn't home at this time, since he had soccer practice with Taichi. My eyes practically bugged out of my head. That meant that. . .I slowly turned the phone receiver around in my hand, and if I had any doubts before, they were gone now. Sure enough, there was a small caller ID on the back of the receiver, and there, it said Yamamoto, Kyousuke. It was Yukio and Akito's father's name. It was followed by their phone number, which I had memorized from calling for rides from Akito whenever we needed transportation late some night.

Ken's story was how I figured it would happen. He had been on his way to the library, and he passed by the beach, not knowing the gang were all there. He spotted Yukio lying down on the ground near the road, where he liked to lay down to give the passersby a scare late at night. He was drunk after all, and Ken, being the nice kid he is, stopped to ask Yukio if he was alright. And Yukio opened his eyes, which Ken says were filled with something more than just alcohol - some kind of drug, probably ecstasy or coke - and he had asked Ken, "You that new kid around here?" Ken said yeah, and Yukio reached up and grabbed Ken, pulling him down onto him. I don't know the rest, because Ken refused to tell me what happened after that, but he showed me this little red mark on his chin that I had previously mistaken for a zit, and he told me it had come from the zipper on Yukio's jeans. When the gang had all started running over, obviously having heard the commotion and yelling out to Yukio, he had enough sense to bring the both of them back to their feet, and that's when he had started spouting off about how Ken had better leave all of the guys in Odaiba alone.

I sat there and took all of this new information in, realizing that this story was much easier to believe than Kari's story was. I stared at the caller ID and hit the back button, and sure enough, Yukio's number was still there, reminding me that this story had to be the truth.

"I don't know what the whole smoke ring thing was about, but maybe she had heard or read somewhere about it being a 'gay thing' and just conveniently recollected the fact as something she had heard me say."

"But she wouldn't lie," I said to myself. I knew Kari couldn't keep a secret very well, but she was against lying, and never appreciated a liar, so I knew she had to have been telling the truth.

"I'm sure she totally believes what she told you is the truth," Ken said. "She wasn't lying. A lie is intentional."

"But why smoke rings? It just sounds so weird."

"Maybe not. Did she tell you there were three big guys there?"

I sighed in relief, glad that the two stories agreed on something.

"Yeah, there was Yukio's brother Akito, my friend Taichi, and Taichi's friend from the soccer team, Kouya."

"Does one of them smoke?"

"Yeah, Akito does."

"Well, first off, she wasn't as close to us as she told you. Those three guys were all over me and I doubt she could have picked up a very clear conversation among all of the fighting."

"Okay." I could accept that much from Hikari.

"I only noticed her standing there when I turned my head to the side because Akito blew all of this smoke in my face."

I pounced on that. "Did you say anything to him about the smoke? Like not to blow it in your face?"

"Yeah, probably. I probably told him not to blow smoke into my face, or something like that."

I stared down at the bed, resting my chin in my hand, sighing to myself.

"Now do you see why I don't defend my actions? If you had come in here and I had just spouted off my side of the story to you, would you have believed me right away? Or would it have just confused you even more?"

I thought about that and admitted, "Yeah, it probably would have."

If it hadn't been for the phone call and the caller ID, I'd probably not have known whether or not to choose his word over Hikari's.

"It's not as far out as it sounds, Takeru, to pull a sentence like that out of thin air and think it's what you really heard. People do it all the time. Like, even in court. They swear to tell the whole truth and then they say that a guy with blonde hair was actually a brunette, or a black jacket was really brown. It's just human error. They see the truth a little differently. It's like. . ."

He trailed off and got up to walk to his mirror. "It's like how I see my reflection. The cut on my face from Yukio's jeans looks to me like it's taking up my whole face."

I got up and walked to the mirror to stand next to him, checking it in the mirror. I hadn't even noticed it when I first saw him, and now, I could still hardly see it.

"And it's like you, Takeru. When I look at you, you look so. . .incredibly thin."

I raised an eyebrow and looked down at myself. "Me? Are you kidding?" I grabbed a piece of my stomach and stared at the fat in my hand. "I'm so totally not thin."

"And that's the way you truly see yourself," Ken said. "You think you're fat. I think this cut is huge. Hikari thinks I said something about smoke rings. All of us believe it's the truth."

I stared at him, wanting to believe him, wanting to nod and agree with everything he was saying and just push it to the back of my mind, but I couldn't. Arguments kept surfacing in my mind.

"But Hikari always tells it like she sees it. And she hates Yukio. If she thought Yukio was hitting on guys, she would laugh hysterically and then tell everyone she sees about it."

"But she didn't see Yukio force me down onto him. All she saw was him yelling that stuff at me. What would you have thought?"

I sighed and shook my head. "I don't know. It's just so confusing."

"I know." He rubbed his eyes. "I can't wait to get out of here again."

"Yeah, as soon as we graduate. . ."

"Graduate." He laughed. "That's cute, Takeru. It's not about graduating, though, it's about figuring out where you're going to go next."

I realized what he was talking about and turned to him. "You can't just run away again! No, you just can't!"

"Why not? Because you need me here?"

I looked away, blushing slightly, because that was exactly what I'd been about to say next. I realized how selfish that would sound. I knew that Ken was going through hell staying here in this town.

Just then, the door burst open. Ken's mother walked in, carrying something in her hand that I couldn't quite see, but that looked like a magazine.

"Ken, can I speak to you in private?"

Ken blinked slowly at her. "Whatever it is, Takeru won't care, and I don't feel like getting up and going over there to talk, so you can just say it."

She looked over at me, and I was surprised to see the anger directed at me in her eyes.

"Are you his new best friend?" she asked shrilly. "I thought maybe you'd be a good influence on him, not. . .not. . ."

I stood up slowly, wondering what the hell gave her the right to say something like that.

"Wherever we moved, it was always a girl that Ken befriended, either that or a feminine guy. When I saw you, and after I'd heard about you being a basketball player and all, I thought maybe it would stop."

I felt hurt, hearing her say these things, and not quite knowing why she was so angry at me. We hadn't exactly asked to be each other's friend, it had just sort of happened that way. She obviously didn't notice that we seemed to be troubled by something. I wanted to say something to her, but I couldn't find the words to say it.

She seemed to sense my anger, because she instantly turned soft. "You seem like a very nice boy, but. . ."

She turned to stare at Ken, who was still lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. She slowly lifted up the magazine, only carrying it by the edge, by the tips of her fingers.

"I found this on the front porch."

She flung it onto the bed and I turned to see it had fallen open. I gasped when I saw what was in it. There were two guys, doing something unmentionable, in some kind of a centerfold. Ken carefully sat up, glanced at it, closed it, picked it up the way his mother had. His mother didn't seem to see the way he was disgusted with what he'd just seen.

"Are you starting in again?" she asked tearfully.

He made a sort of gasping sound as something dripped onto the floor from the magazine. It looked like snot. He dropped it from his fingers and laid his head back down onto the pillow.

"Yeah, I must be starting in again," he said in the same singsong voice he'd used on me before.