Takeru shuffled his feet under the desk and stared blurrily at the worksheet in front of him. He could hardly keep his eyes open, let alone work. Rubbing a hand across his eyes, he glanced at Daisuke next to him.
The darker boy was leaning his chin in his hand and idly making marks on the paper. Prior to the worksheet being handed out, he'd been passed out on his desk, so fast asleep he'd almost been snoring. Just the same as he had been during first hour.
Sighing, the blonde glanced out the window. For the last three days, the five guys had been staying up late and working to try and form a plan to get into the Byen-cho headquarters. The previous night, they'd stayed at Yamato's until 3 in the morning, and Takeru didn't get back home until quarter to 4. He had to sneak in, something he'd never done before he'd gotten into the whole mess. And here he was, sitting in his last hour class and trying not to pass out.
He idly reminded himself how badly he'd worked to get into the deal in the first place. He moaned quietly. It was amazing how much could happen in one week.
There were girls whispering and gossiping a few aisles up, and Takeru listened idly. Most of the things they were talking about were petty – some girl who had chipped nail polish on, some haircut that was awful, that sort of thing. After a while of listening, the conversation took a different turn.
"Did you hear about that Hikari girl?"
Daisuke's head snapped up from the worksheet.
"Yeah, she just went totally missing! No one even, like, has a clue about where she is."
Something to Takeru's right cracked, and he glanced over. Daisuke had broken the pencil in his hand. Giving a quiet grunt of frustration he tossed the pencil aside and put his head down on the desk.
Takeru sighed again. He'd been doing a lot of that recently. The bell rang a second later and he stood wearily. Idly, he waited as Daisuke grumbled and shoved things into his bag, then headed stormily out of the classroom. The blonde followed. "Are you going straight to Taichi's?"
"Yes," Daisuke nodded, dodging around other students as the two made their way down the hall. "Part of me wants to go home and take a nap and eat first, but I don't have time. I also wouldn't mind doing that," the darker boy pointed across the street to the soccer field. "They're gonna play against Odaiba Unity. I was invited to scrimmage with them before the game but... well, that's just out of the question now. Man, have you heard the gossip flying around about Hikari these last few days?"
"Yeah," Takeru sighed a bit, mentally smacking himself for sighing.
"Is it always like this here? Constant gossip out the ass?"
The blonde laughed once, a short, unamused laugh. "Yes. Sadly, yes. I sort of... used to be part of it, too. But now it just really really annoys me. People don't know the beginning of it all and yet they're just running their mouths. God." He blinked. "What?"
Daisuke was staring at him, one eyebrow raised. "Hey hey. You are human after all. I'm fucking amazed."
"Oh, hell," Takeru groaned and rolled his eyes.
The red-haired boy grinned brightly, then stopped and watched the soccer team start to play around a bit. He locked his fingers into the links of the fence and made a face. "Man I wish I was out there."
"Like soccer?"
"Yeah. It's the only sport where you get to kick the shit out of something and you don't get penalized for it."
Takeru laughed quietly, then turned to listen in on a conversation two kids were having.
"Have you seen that kid from Unity, the one with the blue hair?"
"That's Ichijouji Ken. He's really really good."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah! He's the best player I've ever seen and he's only 16!"
Takeru searched his mind. Ichijouji Ken. Ichijouji Ken. The name was so familiar. Why? "Ah-ha... Hikari."
Daisuke turned towards the blonde at the name. "What?"
"My friends said that Hikari used to hang out with Ichijouji Ken. I knew the name was familiar."
Raising one eyebrow, the red-haired boy glanced back out on the field. Used to hang out with Hikari, huh. He shook his head, then shoved away from the fence. "Come on, let's hop a train to Taichi's. I don't feel much like walking."
Sitting sprawled around Taichi's apartment, the five were all silent and lostin thought. The only noise was the quiet ticking of the wall clock and Koushiro idle tapping of laptop keys.
Finally, Takeru cleared his throat and interrupted the silence. "How come we don't just break in? We know where the building is, don't we?"
"Yes, but we don't know how to break in," Yamato grimaced. "We'll be able to get in as soon as we figure out what kind of a security system they're housing."
"The problem is that we can't find that out unless we break into their system again. Which we can't do because that would risk further provoking them into violence. Daisuke got caught the last time, remember?" Koushiro looked up from his laptop for a moment.
Daisuke looked up and spoke for the first time since he'd gotten on the subway with Takeru. "Koush, get me everything you can on Ichijouji Ken."
"Says here he's one of the smartest kids in Japan. He won the all-city, but for some reason he pulled out of going to the country finals. He would have won, too, look at this IQ."
"Rumored IQ," Daisuke added flatly, tapping a word on the screen.
"Don't touch the monitor," Koushiro scrolled down the page. "Says he has an older brother... er, had. He was killed. Car accident."
"Parents?"
"Doesn't mention them much... they admire his intelligence. That's about it."
Daisuke leaned away from the monitor and plopped his chin in his hand thoughtfully. "They must not be very involved in his life," he mumbled.
"What makes you say that?" Yamato asked, eyes never leaving the screen.
"Parents are really important in the life of a kid his age. The fact that the biography doesn't mention them implies that not much is known about them – thusly we can deduce they're not highly involved in his life. Considering the amount of press attention and coverage the kid gets, you would think that it would mention at least something about his mother and father," Koushiro answered.
"What he said," Daisuke pointed. He ran his tongue over his teeth in thought. "Koush, I need class information."
"A list of classmates?" Koushiro asked, even as he was already typing.
"Maybe. I'm thinking a list of classes taken in high school will give me what I need though."
The computer geek shook his head. "I can't do that. I'd need to hack the system of the school. I am not much of a hacker."
"Daisuke is," Takeru blurted. The other three looked up at him, then turned to the dark-skinned boy who was still eyeing the monitor thoughtfully.
"He's right. I used to do it... but I don't know. I haven't been feeling much like a hacker these past few days here."
"Why not?" Taichi grumbled impatiently.
"I don't know."
"He's missing the goggles," Takeru smirked. Daisuke smirked back, but before he could snap out a response Taichi hopped to his feet, rummaged around in his bedroom for a few seconds, then flung something out at Daisuke's head.
"Ouch!" the red-haired boy yelped, catching whatever it was that hit him and rubbing the back of his head. "Geez, always abusing me..." He glanced down to examine what it was that had bruised his head and his ego.
It was a pair of swimming goggles. Round blue lenses held together by a black strap. "There. Goggles. Now you can be a hacker. Sit. Hack," Taichi commanded.
Daisuke rolled his eyes to himself, shaking his head and eyeing the goggles some more. "I don't think it's the... hmm." He glanced up again, tossing the goggles from one hand to the other and studied the four faces all watching him in silent question. "Oh, the hell with it. I can do it. Move over, Koushiro."
The next several minutes crept by slowly as Daisuke, goggles slung around his neck, flipped around the Unity school system until he found a backdoor. "Bingo," he mumbled to himself. "Okay. Password. We have to come up with the password."
"Try unity?" Koushiro guessed.
"Nope."
"Odaiba," Yamato prompted.
"Hmm... nope."
"Central," Takeru said.
Daisuke shrugged and tapped it in, then glanced up at the blonde. "We're in."
"Ha! Oh, go me," he grinned.
"How'd you know that?" Taichi blinked.
"I just guessed. Odaiba Central and Odaiba Unity are rival schools. It was worth a shot."
"Hell yes it was worth a shot," Daisuke shook his head in disbelief.
"Dais, look for a student directory," Koushiro brought the subject back to the important matter at hand.
A few clicks later, Daisuke was mumbling names under his breath as he scrolled down a list of students. "Kaori... Kyaku... Idori... no, before Idori..."
"There," Yamato pointed.
"Don't touch the monitor," Koushiro said again.
"Bingo." Daisuke reached down and snapped Taichi's goggles up over his eyes. "Okay, we'll start with freshman year and go on from there."
"What exactly are we looking for?" Takeru asked.
"I'm not sure.
I'll know it when I see it." The room was silent as all five
scanned the first and second semester class lists for Ken's
freshman year. "Damn," Daisuke finally muttered, then moved on
to sophomore year. He idly scrolled through first semester, then
stopped and scrolled back up. "Wait, wait. This is it," he
tapped the screen.
"Don't touch the goddamn monitor!"
Koushiro yelped.
"Computer programming?" Taichi tilted his head to the side.
"Yeap. Here we go, a list of fellow students in the same class. Whoo, grades too.
"Damn, look," Yamato pointed. "Ichijouji got a 107."
"Damn. Even I couldn't pull that. And... oh, forget it. Touch the monitor all you want."
"Koushiro, I need you to cross-reference this list with all known Byen-cho members," Daisuke looked up.
"All right. It'll take a while."
Daisuke stood up and stretched. "Save a copy of the list to disk. We can't stay in their system for a long time."
"Why computer programming?" Yamato leaned back on the couch.
"Byen-cho is high tech, remember?"
"Ahh," the older blonde nodded. "So you think he got bribed in because of his skills."
"Yeah, or at least something like that," Daisuke pulled the goggles from his eyes and settled them on his forehead. "I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but I think he somehow got linked into it through that class."
"Makes sense."
"Plus," the dark-haired boy cracked his knuckles idly, "since Ichijouji's parents aren't highly involved in his life, I can assume he'd have the spare time to mix it up."
"Dais," Koushiro turned away from the monitor. "Look at this list."
All five turned their attention back to the laptop. "Holy monkeys, what is that?"
"It's a list of known Byen-cho members," the techie made a face. "And it's long."
"Jesus Mary Joseph on a crutch," Daisuke raised an eyebrow. "It's huge."
"This will take me a while," Koushiro sighed.
"In that case, no sense in us staying up all night trying to think, right?" Taichi shoved off the couch. "I propose we go home, get a good nights rest, and resume tomorrow. It's Saturday, after all. Saturday good."
"Second that motion," Yamato raised his hand. "I want to go home and pass out for the next twelve and a half hours."
"All right," Koushiro shrugged. "I guess you're right. It won't do any good for you guys to wait up for answers we might not even get until four in the morning."
"Ugh, don't say four in the morning," Daisuke moaned.
Takeru yawned, glancing at his watch. It was only a quarter past seven, but he was really tired. And hungry. He'd have to go home and fix himself a huge dinner.
"You know," Daisuke said, jerking Takeru out of his ponderings of food. He paused, then shook his head. "You know what I could really go for right now? Hot tub. A nice, comfy hot tub. Just to kill all this stress." He yawned loudly. "Oh yeah."
They crossed the street and Takeru bit his lip. "They have one by the gym. Of my apartment building."
"Oh yeah?"
"I can get you in."
Daisuke smirked slightly. "How much d'ya want?"
"Huh? Oh, no, that's not it. It's no problem, really."
Narrowing one eye in suspicion, Daisuke raised one eyebrow. "If this is your secret plot to buddy up to me..."
"It's not! I swear! Just being nice and all."
Daisuke sunk down in the hot water, leaning back against the wall of the hot tub. "Oh, yes. This is awesome." He opened one eye and studied Takeru. "What's your problem? Don't tell me you don't know how to relax."
Takeru shifted uneasily on the edge of the hot tub, studying the water around his ankles. "No, that's not it."
Yawning, the other boy shrugged and settled in again. "You have no idea how good this feels. We had one of these puppies back home. If there's one thing I remember, that would be it. After a long game I'd come home and just let all the stress melt away. Oh yeah."
"Geez, don't cum in the water or anything."
"Ha!" Daisuke opened one eye and grinned. "You do have a sense of humor! Fucking amazed again! I'd guess you wouldn't know what it's like to be homesick anyway."
Takeru finally got up the nerve to slide into the water. "Oh, come on. Homesick?"
"Like you wouldn't believe. It's a completely different world out here." Daisuke yawned again and ran his hands through his hair.
"Osaka can't be that different from Odaiba."
He gave a snort of disbelief. "You'd be surprised."
"You're not from Osaka, are you?"
Dark brown eyes snapped open and focused on the blonde. He studied him for a long moment, before finally raising one eyebrow. "No."
"I knew it!" Takeru slapped the water with a hand in triumph. "I so knew it."
"So how'd you guess? I know it isn't that obvious."
"No," the blonde admitted, sinking back into the water. "The first thing that gave it away was the fact that you speak with an accent. Osaka has an accent and a dialect and all that, but you don't. You talk wrong. You talk like someone from Tokyo. And I know because I've been to Tokyo. But you're not from Tokyo either because your accent is wrong."
"Impressive."
"Plus you've slipped up twice about where you're from, and Yamato laughed when I told him you were from Osaka."
"I slipped up?"
"Just now, when you said that you had a hot tub back home."
Daisuke grinned slightly. "I didn't even catch that one myself."
"And there was one other time. When we were talking about the weather and you said it was always hot." Takeru paused, then pressed forward. "So where are you really from?"
"L.A."
"L.A? As in... Los Angeles?"
"Yup."
"As in Los Angeles, California?"
"Yup."
"As in Los Angeles, California, USA?"
Daisuke opened one eye, then shut it again. "Yup."
Takeru blinked several times, shaking his head. "Whoa, okay. So you're from the US. Uh. How'd you get here? How do you... what the hell?!"
The red haired boy rolled his eyes and smirked, "See, this is why I told everyone I came from Osaka."
"I don't get it."
"I'll back up for you." Daisuke hefted himself out of the hot tub and sat on the edge, goggles still slung around his neck. "I'll start with my parents. Mom was born in Osaka and moved to Los Angeles when she was seven or eight or something like that; I don't remember the age. Dad is half-German and half-Japanese. Well, mainly anyway, we're kinda mutts. But anyway, that's not the point. The point is that half-German Motomiya dad had a job in Los Angeles and he met my mom, la la la, they had my sister and me, so on and so forth... and about two months ago my dad had his job transferred here because Mom wanted to move back to the good old country of... whatever Japan is famous for. And that's about it." He dropped himself back into the water and shut his eyes once more.
"I still don't get it."
"God dammit!" Daisuke swept his arm in front of him and splashed Takeru.
The blonde, dripping with warm water, laughed. "Okay, okay! I get it, really! Well, not completely, but I got the most important part. So why did you tell everyone you were from Osaka?"
"People don't exactly like Americans here."
"Oh."
Daisuke stretched, then shifted in the hot tab. "So, Takeru. What's your deal?"
"Huh?"
"Your deal. Your story. Tell me about yourself."
"Oh. Um... I have an older brother but... you knew that already... Um, I live alone with my mom... parents are divorced but you knew that too..."
"Why?"
"Huh?"
"Why are your parents divorced?"
"Uh, I don't really know. Fighting, I think. I was too young when they divorced, you'd have to ask Yamato."
"You never asked?"
"For the story? No." Takeru drew a circle in the water and traced it over and over again.
"Why not?"
"I don't know. I guess I just never wanted to know. Part of me... it sounds stupid and all but part of me keeps hoping that someday, they'll get over whatever it was and get back together again. And we'll be some happy little family all over again." Takeru looked up from the water circle and narrowed his eyes as Daisuke. "I never told anybody that before. Don't go blabbing it around to everyone."
"Eh. I won't. Besides, it's really not all it's cracked up to be."
"huh?"
"The Perfect Family." Daisuke rolled his eyes and shoved his goggles up onto his forehead. "There's me, my mom, my dad, and my sister. That's the perfect family in all the sitcoms and shit, right? WRONG," he cut off Takeru in the middle of his 'yes' answer. "To begin with, my sister takes precedence over everything. It's Jun this, Jun that, Jun Jun Jun. That's her name, Jun," he added, as if it weren't completely obvious. "Why can't you be more like Jun, get the grades Jun did, Jun did this, Jun did that, oh fuck me if I even cared," Daisuke threw his hands into the air. "Screw that. I exist too, you know? And then there's my dad. My Lord does he bitch. Everything is wrong with him. My hair, my clothes, my shoes, my room, my music, my grades, my friends, goddamn, you name it and he can't handle it. My mom... geez, she's nice enough and all, really, except when my dad is around she turns into a little mouse. She'll sit back and watch him slap me around, and then afterwards she tries to clean up the blood and make it all okay. 'Oh, he didn't mean it,' she says, 'he had a bad day at work,' she says. Which of course makes the whole fucking thing all right, yeah? Fuck that. Fuck the whole lot of it. Perfect family my ass. It's bullshit is what it is."
The red-haired boy sighed and sunk into the water, shutting his eyes. "I'm hungry," he stated, changing the subject entirely.
Takeru blinked quietly and bit the inside of his mouth. "Want to come up to my apartment? Food and all."
"Your mom won't mind?"
"Nah. She's at work right now anyways. I'm supposed to stay at Yamato's for dinner on Friday's but... well, you already know that part of the day, you were there. He was too tired to mess with that." Takeru pulled himself up and out of the hot tub. "So, come on. Food."
"Food works."
